


Code Black

by apparentlytaboo



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Blood and Gore, Brock and Venom being socially awkward like it is their job, Canon-Typical Violence, Eddie Brock and Venom as one person-thing, Eddie Brock has Issues, Eddie and Venom are Dorks, Found Family Avengers, Hulk and Venom being monster bros, M/M, Overprotective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark is bizarrely cool with it, Venom Symbiote (Marvel) Eats People, Venom is involved blood and gore are gonna happen, all of the Avengers are actually, eventual (maybe) sexy times, good guy! Venom, we'll see how brave I am
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25984990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apparentlytaboo/pseuds/apparentlytaboo
Summary: Picks up at the end of the movie, before we find out about Venom being alive. Eddie Brock and Venom adapt to each other and begin to carve out a place for their shared self in the world. In the process, they stumble into becoming a vigilante, get tangled up in the sticky threads of a nation-wide conspiracy and ultimately seek out the assistance of the Avengers (with some understandable trepidation), only to discover that the most intelligent (and dangerous) of them all seem to know their most well-guarded secret.
Relationships: Background Peter Parker/Wade Wilson, Eddie Brock & Peter Parker & Venom Symbiote & Wade Wilson, Eddie Brock/Tony Stark, Eddie Brock/Tony Stark/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 24
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so, hear me out: first off, (while I can 1000% get behind the wonderful products out there showcasing Venom and Eddie getting down and dirty) I love the idea of Eddie and Venom growing so close that they become two halves of a whole, one conglomerate person. So this is me exploring that idea. Second, if there is one person on earth who would be intrigued by, not afraid of, and totally accepting of an alien, it would be Tony Stark. (Like, I think he would get OBSESSED). So. Here is a slow-burn, criminal-mystery, character study-ish thing about two (or three depending on how you look at it) morons falling in love amidst danger and violence and Avenger-type shenanigans.
> 
> Rating might change in later chapters 0.0

Hollow is a sensation. An emptiness so vast as to be all-consuming. It is the ashes of a fire burnt hot and fast and gone before you can appreciate the warmth. His ribs are a fragile cage: all that stands between him and the cavernous void lying dormant within, waiting to implode. He is a husk masquerading as a living thing, blind in the aftermath of having seen too much.

Eddie walks the streets with the leaden limbs of a sleepwalker and a mind empty to match, searching for something no more real than the fading tendrils of a dream, wishing he could fall asleep and wake up whole again.

***

Rain tastes like ash in the city. Each foreign element stands out blatantly against the smoothness of the water and calls attention to individual contaminants. Six months. Eddie hardly remembers the bliss of his previous ignorance as he wandered through the world, somehow much less a part of it then than he is now. Augmentation of senses, as he has come to think of it, has manifested in many forms since an embryonic Venom latched on and catalyzed the change within him.

It had been maddening; the constant hunger and irritability felt like an aftershock, the afterimage of trauma holding onto him and digging in its sickening hooks, reminding him at every turn of how it had felt to be a part of something so much _more_ than just himself; of Venom being ripped viscerally from his life. He assumed it was a unique form of survivor’s guilt.

Until it failed to dull.

Science agrees that organisms possess the ability to see far greater ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum than a humans’ eyes are capable; it is reasonable to assume that colors exist beyond our ability to see and therefore comprehend. Explaining the slow progression that overtook Eddie’s optical perception of the word seems just as difficult to describe as an invisible color. Nothing is _new_ per say, nothing notably out of the ordinary besides the occasional nagging sense that he should not be able to make out a certain detail as clearly as he can.

It is odd, on a moonless night, to note the lowered light level but not experience a corresponding hindrance to his sight.

Smells are just… something else altogether. Every sense memory is the same, all of Eddie’s favorite foods smell just like they always have (if not always similarly appetizing). His cologne has not changed, though the intensity of the perfume now sends him into sneezing fits (twice he’s had to air out the apartment just to _breathe_ again). Identifying the components of a dish, the ingredients in a certain slice of bread, the materials used to assemble his jacket, even the subtly unique differences that differentiate one human from the next... that awareness is altogether new.

One rust colored evening as the sun dies slowly over the jagged urban landscape, Eddie scents the putrid repugnance of adrenaline mixed with fear, soured by unwashed skin and the echoing remnants of tobacco staining weathered fingers. It follows him like a nauseating specter; reaching out a ghostly tendril on the odd gust of wind, carried forward by the occasional draft of passing cars. The phantom follows him the better part of his way home, accompanying him down random twists and turns as he meanders down wrong streets and unnecessary alleyways, a creeping tendril of excitement snaking through him.

Eddie doesn’t realize he’s playing with his would-be assailant until he grows bored of the game.

Slinking into the pitch dark between two overgrown brick giants feels natural, a grin tearing his features as he lurks in the dark like the bogeyman his pursuer clearly fancies _himself_ to be.

Waiting in the damp, putrid air stagnating the shadows, he finally feels it; the creep along his spine that connects his vague, unrecognized instincts to a _consciousness_. Always watching, gently guiding him in the right direction.

The thinnest veil of black gleaming in the gloom as it slides over his cold flesh feels like _heaven_. It feels like surrendering to the embrace of a lost friend. Like going home.

Venom half-forms, supporting himself atop a delicate latticework of black tendrils sprouting from their collar bones, and Eddie smiles so wide his face might split to match the toothsome grin sharing his shoulders.

To say that the mugger is surprised when they step from the shadows would be quite the understatement.

***

_Apart-Meant_

_Brick groans and pops as the sun rises, infusing the weathered surfaces with fusion-born heat. The metal rails and cowlings running up the side of the building in a crosshatch of fire escapes and railings add their own unique groan to the iron jungle’s morning symphony, the city waking as light begins to breech the gaps squeezed between high buildings, tight spaces warping the rays. Any other day it would be comforting, in the way that the sounds of the forest set a north-easterner’s mind at ease, or a coastal child finds solace in the ocean’s rhythmic waves. Today, however, the normal ritual is nearly eclipsed by the cacophonous shudder of her breath, screaming in and out with the violent crashing of her heart against her ribs; neither of which will settle despite her desperate efforts._

_The small apartment is usually suffused with the sounds of life by now; coffee burbling on the counter as it percolates, water cascading down the tile walls of the bathroom in the course of her morning shower. In its place, an eerie silence has taken root beyond the imagined safety of the closet door, offering pathetic little protection from the monster stalking through the dawn shadows. Fear holds her rooted to the cool closet floor as a man with unholy intensions patrols the corridor beyond her open bedroom. A phone sits innocuously amongst a clutter of knickknacks atop her bedside shelf, but the few feet of distance separating her from it might as well be the gaping maw of an endless abyss. Not for the first time, she curses herself for leaving it, squeezing her eyes shut to stifle an instinctive scream as a shadow eclipses her doorway._

_Struggling to breathe quietly past the strangulation of her own fingers attempting to muffle any evidence of her breath, she waits, counting seconds until the shadow drifts past, choosing to investigate elsewhere. Five, four, she steels herself to break out of her small semblance of shelter. Three, two, she prays for her legs to overcome their paralysis. One, she pushes the door open and is on her feet lunging in what feels like breakneck speed and slow motion all at once. The hallway floorboards creek, the way they do when someone shifts their weight upon them. A sweaty palm smacks onto the surface of the phone case, swipes it off the shelf and half the other items tumble towards the floor. Socks slip on the smooth flooring as she faces away from the hall, turning toward the bathroom door just a few long strides away._

_Her heart continues to thunder, adrenaline coursing through her veins with lightning crispness, singing along her nerves to amplify her reactions, and through the chemicals and her own intense focus she doesn’t feel the blow. To her perception, her body simply stops responding to her commands, dropping to the floor in a heavy tangle of dead weight and sliding under the force of her desperate momentum. Still, the pain fails to penetrate her panic._

_The world blurs and suddenly it is the ceiling above her, swimming whimsically in the golden hues painting the tops of the high rises. She blinks through fuzziness as a shadow occupies her vision, wielding a snarling parody of a smile so painfully familiar; one that used to feel like home._

_Movement is difficult, like the signals her brain is sending out are getting caught in thick cotton and suffocated before they reach their destination. Slow and uncoordinated, she flails, swiping at the hands grabbing her long hair, banging uselessly against the legs of furniture and jams of doors as he drags her past them, desperate for any kind of anchor. By the time she manages to land a solid grasp on one steely wrist, she is bent awkwardly over the lip of the shower stall, her socked feet gaining no purchase on the slick tile. There is a steady murmur in the background she knows to be words, but she cannot make them out, will not spare a shred of her focus from the task of freedom to pay them any mind._

_The blow to her face takes the breath out of her and stills her for a moment, blackness creeping in at the edges of her vision when he strikes again, and she goes slack. His hand may as well be made of metal for all the leeway he is giving her, and no matter her struggle the grip will not budge. Through dazed, half-lidded eyes she registers the glimmer of metal, reddish gold as it reflects the morning twilight. Impending death does strange things to people; the sudden acceptance of her situation brings a supernatural calm, stilling her body and mind at once as time seems to freeze over and steal her breath._

_Silence engulfs them. The blade rises. Her bedside clock ticks over loudly. A rumble like rolling thunder shakes through the porcelain and tile gouging into her back as the blade begins its inevitable decent. She thinks it must be her heart, making the world vibrate to remember its last few last beats. Then the blade pauses. The monster seems to feel it too; turns around with a familiar look of concern on its face. The body over her convulses violently, wrenching her head back with a final jerk before releasing her completely. There is a crunching like dry twigs in autumn and a sound like tearing into raw chicken and the hand holding the blade drops and continues on to the floor, following the rest of the dead meat crumpling beneath its own weight as the blade remains suspended, connected to a shining thread of inky darkness._

_Carefully, they draw the blade away and toss it behind them into the empty bedroom, scooping up the corpse in a massive hand and disposing of it in the cleanest (and most efficient) way possible. Eddie wonders faintly if his lack of revulsion in response to human gristle beneath their teeth is a sign of him losing his humanity. Then he starts thinking about how precisely he can identify the feel of human flesh and ligaments compared to other organisms they have eaten and stops the train of thought in its tracks._

_Blood is nothing new to them, but Eddie crumbles at bit at the sight of the girl, terrified and trembling, covered in a light mist of fine red droplets (the heart maintains an average of three beats between rupture of the jugular and the spinal cord being severed, the first of which tends to manifest itself in a burst like the spray from a rattle-can). What happens next is something of a new occurrence; one of the many indicators that the dynamic between them has changed since V’s reemergence. Now, instead of carrying on with his actions when Venom feels Eddie react viscerally to a situation, he takes a moment to try and understand why. As they pause, the woman begins to stir, sitting up laboriously and bringing a shaking hand to her face. She doesn’t appear to notice the broken pinky protruding at an unnatural right angle from her hand, just swipes at her cheeks as if to wipe away tears, although she (somehow) is not crying._

_Having experienced shock quite a few times himself by this point, Eddie gets it. By extension Venom does as well, to a point (that particular biological reaction does not occur naturally in his kind, apparently not a beneficial trait in the evolution of a symbiont), and neither of them has any illusions as to the effect their continued presence is likely to have upon her. They turn towards the open doorway, intent on heading back the way they’d come._

_They are not at all prepared to feel a slight tug at their arm, arresting their momentum more effectively than any measure of strength could, and they turn as one to find a bruised hand, so tiny by comparison, wrapped around their pinky. The uniqueness of the situation gives them pause, unable to remove her damaged hand without jostling the injury. Her lips move soundlessly, her eyes, which had previously been unfocussed, are fixed unflinchingly upon their gruesome visage and in the heart of them they recognize this for the warning sign it surely is._

_‘Don’t leave’ her lips seem to say, over and over at an increasingly panicked tempo. Unsure how to go about prying her hand from theirs without causing further damage (gentleness is a work in progress) they take the risk of frightening her and speak._

_“The police are on their way,” having called them just before leaping up to the balcony. Sure enough, she flinches at the tenor of their voice, eyeing the countless rows of jagged spikes that pass for their teeth. A gentle tug yields nothing, like a Chinese finger trap the more he pulls she simply grips him tighter._

_“Don’t leave me” comes out broken, quieter than anyone else would be likely to hear, and they look mournfully at the open bathroom window, back down at the broken girl, and surprisingly it is Venom who folds their hulking form into a low crouch, attempting the impossible task of fitting them into the tiny space next to her._

_Still shaking, she calms slightly, her white knuckles never loosening their hold. They can feel the erratic pulsing of blood in her palm as it rushes past their flesh. Just as the droplets wetting her face begin to dry, losing their glossy luster, her tiny form expands with a deep breath, eyes squeezing shut and for a helpless moment they are afraid this is the precursor to tears. Perhaps a complete breakdown. Instead, her dark lashes open to reveal a much clearer version of the light blue; still terrified but beginning to think again. As they watch, her eyes scan the room beyond the open door. They can tell the moment her eyes light upon the knife, the object capturing her gaze with the gravity of a black hole._

_She looks as though she is staring at her own grave._

_Eddie wishes he could start this over. Wishes they had forgone the phone call and discretion of the back alley and simply scaled the building after he saw the man creep in through her window, reeking of malice (when you can smell chemicals and pheromones as well as they can, there are precious few emotions that cannot be deduced by scent). That they would have arrived before he had a chance to get his hands on her, not just prior to the final act. He wishes that they had thrown him from the window, eaten his broken limbs one by one and left his mangled trunk to rot in the stinking gutter under the glaring sun._

_The deep rumble of Venom agreeing with themselves brings her focus back to the giant alien monster in the room, who just ate a man in front of her but whose company she seems perfectly at ease with sharing for the time being._

_“Thank you” she says quietly to his hand, staring at the point where her thin fingers are still resting on his flesh. They give their gentlest approximation of a comforting squeeze. “You’re an angel.” They blink at her, Eddie incredulous, Venom confused without context._

_Eddie floods their mind with as many memories as he can muster, taking a back seat for the moment as V sorts through the references (It’s a Wonderful Life’s Clarence, Angels in the Outfield, beautiful people with wings and good intentions, Castiel as a leviathan is the only ‘angelic’ thing they compare to, and he’s pretty sure that isn’t how she meant it) and comes out the other side just as bewildered as Eddie. Goodness knows how, but she seems to interpret their denial from the Rorschach that serves as their face, and it doesn’t seem to sit well._

_Just as they are about to refute it, she cuts him off with a ready rebuttal. “You came out of nowhere, when I needed help the most, and you saved me. I would be dead,” a chocking pause and she meets the milky white of their gaze without fear. “And now he can’t ever hurt me again.”_

_In the quiet after her outburst they hear the story she left unsaid, the days where no one came to rescue her, the umbrella of fear she lived under afterwards._

_“Never again,” they agree._

_“Never again” she echoes like a prayer, voice tinged with reverence._

_For a while, they sit in silence. She afloat in the seas of her own mind, pondering the straight she somehow navigated, brushing close with a whirlpool promising death, chance leading her instead to cross paths with a monster the likes of which she never could have imagined. A monster to kill a monster. They watch the evidence of these deep currents rippling across the surface of her face and contemplate the strangeness of a world in which a terror such as them could be another person’s version of a savior._

_Eddie thinks her world must have been unspeakably dark, for them to have shed a light upon it instead of staining it darker._

_As she sits adrift, a ruckus begins many floors beneath them, floating up the stairwells into the unearthly still of the apartment and invading it with the sounds of life. She startles at the clatter of boots upon the walkway, pulling into herself far enough to release her death grip upon them, and by the time she whips her head back from the doorway they are halfway out the bathroom window, leaping away into the bloody dawn._

***

Eddie had a not-so-modest amount of funds squirreled away, because if there is one thing digging through society’s metaphorical garbage has taught him, it is that you had better plan for an uncertain future. Which is absolutely how he would define his present.

During the dark days (as Venom not-so-politely refers to them) Eddie hadn’t spared much thought toward anything as high-functioning as finding a job. Now, with two mouths to feed and the emotional stability to actually _think_ , a source of income has become a much more pressing concern.

Initially he had reached out to a few firms and, to his surprise, got a couple of favorable responses and even one or two unsolicited requests that were completely unexpected. The positions ranged from news anchor to junior reporter.

Trouble is, Eddie’s life has changed too drastically to fit back into the shape of its old mold. At a glance, stress has turned him into a mild nutter constantly muttering to himself and, if you catch him at the right moment, making random statements out of the blue, as if responding to an unspoken question. And the change is becoming more and more pronounced as time goes on.

The lines dividing Eddie Brock and Venom are bleeding into one another at what feels to be an exponential rate; their masses drifting closer almost to the point of singularity.

As they settle deeper into themselves, suppressing their combined behaviors becomes easier, but commensurately loathsome. Eddie had never been a fan of changing himself to suit another’s expectations (see “The Brock Report” and, namely, “Carlton Drake”) and Venom has indeed become an integral part of both who and what Eddie is. _We_ are Venom, after all.

Add to that the gamut of new sensations that is the world through the augmented senses of human plus symbiote, and the result is a scatter-brained, borderline-neurotic man prone to either startling or freezing without warning, with the attention span of a magpie.

Altogether, not the traits of a successful reporter. In the early months they struggled, trying to fit themselves into Eddie’s old routines, but it only served to make them both agitated and ill-tempered.

One evening after a particularly arduous day at the new office, Eddie sits them down in the living room of their small apartment and surrounds himself with his writings while Venom picks through the leftovers in the fridge. Over the years Eddie has accumulated several boxes of articles and short stories, jotted down on old notebooks, printer paper, even the occasional receipt or napkin.

They were unprintable as far as his editors had been concerned, either too edgy or too specific, saturated with his own voice and not polished enough to suit the mass public’s appetites for consumption. Eddie sits pouring through the pages, lost in thought until Venom starts to read over his shoulder, the memories dug up by nostalgia sharpening as Venom turns his attention to them.

This is yet another uniquity: having Venom in his head is like running a modified operating system complete with document recovery and image enhancement. Any information coded into his brain rests at their mental fingertips. Not only that, but the memories post “V-day” are _sharper_ , as if he’d received a mental upgrade in storage and processing power, saving his memories in 4K.

Now he reads through a snippet jotted down in a hotel outside of Omaha, in town to catch a rare opportunity to interview a chairman of the Os-corporation. He had been walking near his hotel post-interview, when he spotted a small girl barely bigger than a stray dog, huddled in the mouth of an alleyway in a soiled jumper.

Looking back now, he can recall with vivid clarity the smell of an unwashed body, the hot garbage spilling out of dumpsters in the alleyway, recognize the acrid stench of rancid blood for the first time and as suddenly as he feels the rush of panic and need to vomit overwhelming him, the image dissipates, replaced by an eerie tranquility that is beginning to feel less alien and more comforting the more often Venom employs it. It’s a sensation-memory from a time Venom had spent as a creature without eyes, their movements felt like floating through the currents of a deep aquatic habitat on a foreign world.

Eddie breathes.

Venom expands in his chest, just enough to let him feel the pressure behind his ribs and pushes out along his arm to pull another notebook forward, this one’s cover long faded, his tendrils flipping through the dog-eared pages.

 **“Can we publish them ourself?”** The statement belies the care with which he approaches the remnants of Eddie’s life before Venom, how he had treated Anne, like anything that Eddie seemed to care about is equally precious to him, simply because it is important to Eddie. The suggestion surprises him, but it shouldn’t. Venom has been spending the bulk of his time reliving Eddie’s memories, getting to know life on earth through his eyes and coming to understand his host in the process.

“We could” the thought has occurred to him many times before, but he never committed. It had never previously been worth his time.

**“It is a waste to leave them like this.”**

As it turns out, a certain degree of infamy and rebel-esque notoriety go a long way towards making oneself into a sort of modern cult/pop culture hero. Several small compilations later Eddie has a handful of reviews from acclaimed sources and a far larger influx of orders than his one (plus) man operation can uphold, and between his day job, editing in their ‘spare’ (Hah!) time and losing sleep to their frequent late-night hunts, something’s got to give and it isn’t hard to identify what it should be.

The unspoken relief with which the company accepts his resignation does nothing for their pride, but it solidifies their conviction. Eddie had worked too long for people who never appreciated him: it was about time he took to a calling that benefitted only _them_.

Eight months and a couple of part time employees later, they receive the first transcript. A small collection of short stories inked onto printer paper and neatly held together with paperclips arrives in the mail one morning, and apart from themselves and the author, not a soul has ever read them. They’re eclectic, plot and genre wandering far off the beaten path of what’s popular in modern literature, and while they are not necessarily his cup of tea, he thinks they are bound to be relevant to _someone._ They deserve, at a minimum, the same chance his scribblings have to reach the world. So, he publishes it; and then the watershed is well and truly opened.

***

_An interlude_

_It is dark. The unbroken blackness pervades every crevice of her being. At first the numbness feels like nothing more than a part of the cold seeping into her limbs from the rock which seems to be all around her. Her limbs are leaden; moving takes more effort than she knows the words for. She reaches her shaking hands as far as they can go and finds nothing but concrete, smooth slabs, jagged chunks, tiny pitted lumps the size of marbles. There are strings of metal sticking out of the one on her right. To her left is nothing but an expanse of dust carpeting the stone amalgam._

_She breathes and the air is thick; tiny bits of rock and mortar pervading every inch of it and sticking in her throat. She coughs, and flails, and panics when her legs fail to move with the rest of her. Two tiny hands slap down hard onto a large chunk of cold stone and she screams, fighting to push against the immovable boulder pinning her in place._

_She gulps in air, or tries to, but the dust is choking now, and she can’t calm down, can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t **move**. Her frantic breathing reverberates in the small space and she is **suffocating** down here in the dark, with nothing but her own panic and the dull scraping of her thrashing body against the floor to keep her company._

_Suddenly, it is as though the immobilizing force has spread to her chest. A weight is pressing her down, holding her flat against the stone, and she struggles all the harder; breath coming in short, wet gasps. Her hands rush to her chest, to fight it, to struggle, to **live**._

_She is prepared for more cold, hard stone; the thing she finds instead is warm, almost hot, strong in the same way cement is, but soft somehow, smooth; almost wet, like the lizards she caught in the country last summer. Or the rays from the aquarium petting zoo. The shock freezes her to the spot, her hands clinging fast to the shape of an enormous hand, and then thunder rocks through the dark and brings pain with it; white hot and all-consuming, and the scream that tears out of her is deafening._

_As quickly as it came, the pain recedes, leaving a dull throbbing ache in its wake; she can feel each heartbeat in the top of her thighs. When her mind recovers enough, she reaches down to feel it only to have her hand stopped by another warm one, so massive it engulfs the lower half of her arm. Shaking all over now, she coughs the dust from her lungs as best she can and speaks to the dark. “Hello?”_

_The silence stretches, but she is calming herself to try and hear, to listen… and there beneath the sound of her blood rushing in her ears, is the sound of another (larger) creature breathing. “Hello?” she tries again, and the desperation in her voice overwhelms her, her chest shaking with something far too violent to be called tears._

**_“Hello”_ ** _the darkness rumbles, the voice seeming to come from all around her in the tiny space._

_“I can’t move.” Never before has it been so hard to speak, her words are barely loud enough to hear over the sound of their combined breath. Fortunately, it seems to be enough for the darkness._

_“Who are you?” she asks._

**_“We are Venom.”_ **

_~_

_Quiet walks home are becoming one of Eddie’s favorite things these days. Venom is a consistent thrum beneath his skin; warm and comforting in the solidity of his presence. It is the same in his mind as well, every empty space filled up with a friendly presence. As their feet carry them through familiar paths, they watch the streets, observing whatever catches their fancy; determining who has the thought to look first, who gives the command to move their head and slew their eyes is not only impossible but irrelevant. They wander aimlessly as one, neither having any purpose other than enjoying the small piece of monotony in their otherwise discordant schedule._

_Had either been smart enough to realize how comfortable they were becoming; they would have expected their combined crap luck to ruin it eventually._

_The sun is just bleeding out below the horizon when an unholy roar reverberates through the city block; tremors course through the sidewalk and a concussive way ripples the air. Even through Stark’s dampeners, they feel the sonic boom resonating poisonously in their very bones and it is agony; but he has given them enough leeway to remain united._

_In the aftermath, the scene before them becomes unnaturally still for a moment, as if reality itself decided to hold its breath; and then the building on the corner buckles like paper Mache in the rain, great clouds of dust and debris wafting out into the street, engulfing the crowd of stunned pedestrians. Not long after that the screaming starts._

_Eddie was among the initial wave of first responders; brave souls charging blindly into the thick dust in the dyeing dusk light, trying to home in on the panicked voices clamoring for attention in the chaos. Fortunately, the madness of the situation blinded people to the nature of their assistance; too focused on their own survival or that of another to notice just how large the chunks of rubble they were moving happened to be. Within minutes any one able bodied or in easily accessible areas had been removed._

_Then they find the mother._

_Or more precisely, she found them._

_“Help me! Oh my god, help me please! My daughter is in there!” A woman was struggling over the stones, heading for a small gap in the detritus that looked to have once been a doorway, perhaps to the sublevels. As though on cue, the rubble gave an ominous grumble and several of the larger piles shifted, something deep beneath the surface gave way with a gut-wrenching groan and the whole mess sunk inward, as if there were a sinkhole in the center of the foundation. The woman screamed, herself and several others thrown off their feet with the violence of the motion._

_Despite the force with which she hit the deck, she was still moving, crawling towards the gaping black maw of the stairwell and sobbing, what sounded like a name slipping into her babbled litany at intervals._

_There were sirens in the distance. Most of the able-bodied were helping one-another off the site; apparently just realizing how unstable a freshly fallen building must be. The whole thing was going to keep settling deeper as the lower levels buckled. Eddie’s pretty sure they’re the only ones who might not be killed by it._

_“Ma’am? Ma’am!” They have to reach out and physically stop her from crawling into the gap, her face frantic and unfocused when they turn her round by the shoulders. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?” they give her a little shake for emphasis, receive a nod. “Is your daughter down there?” Another jerky motion up and down. “Ok. Look, the building’s falling, you need to get out of here, alight? We are going to get your daughter” they hurry to add before she can shake them loose, trying to fight her way out of their hold as soon as they suggested for her to leave. “What is her name?” They demand._

_“Shireen,” it comes out on a sob._

_“We are going to find her. She needs you to be here when she gets out, do you understand? Get out of the rubble.” The sirens are closer now, flashing lights and loud shouts carrying over the din. Eddie flags down an officer drawing near with a flashlight and gets the woman to her feet; passes her off to the young man does not wait to watch them go. Eddie jumps down into the abyss and feels them become Venom as soon as the darkness covers them._

_~_

_The girl’s legs are trapped tight beneath a hefty chunk of ceiling and while they are perfectly capable of lifting it off her, it is immediately obvious that they shouldn’t. They barely move the rock and inch, moving as slowly as they are capable of, and her scream splits the darkness. Blood gushes from beneath the stone and as quickly as they lifted it, they place it back down, let the weight close the severed arteries once more._

_The very object that has injured her is currently keeping her alive. Eddie is stunned; for all their strength and agility there is nothing they can do to help her. Moving the rock is impossible; digging to the surface is too dangerous. Shortly after they entered the basement, the building above continued to settle, sealing their exit and compressing what little space remains. It shifted once more after they found and followed the scent of blood to this isolated little corner, trapping them in the tight space with an unconscious little girl. The structure is too unstable for them to go shifting large bits of rubble; they are far more likely to crush her under the shifting stone._

_Eddie is glad she can’t see them in the perfect darkness. Her plight is traumatizing enough without her knowing that she’s trapped with a monster._

_She is getting her breathing back under control, amazingly. One tiny hand flings out towards them and smacks gently into their forearm, her tiny fingers clutching at them with impressive strength._

_“Venom?” She asks the darkness, her voice hoarse after the blood curdling screams._

**_“We are here.”_ ** _It is a wonder that their vicious rumble seems to calm her down._

_“I’m cold.” The tiny hand anchoring her to them is shaking._

_They can’t free her. They can’t get to help. There’s only one thing they can do for her at this point. Venom shifts their weight carefully, gently lifts the fragile hand from their arm, contorts them into the cramped space of this claustrophobic cavern. Slowly, they settle into the dust, curled around the girl like an overgrown mutant_ cat _, sharing their warmth. It’s the only thing they have the power to give._

_For hours, they lay in the stagnant darkness, her tiny hands using their claw-like fingers like a worry stone. She hiccoughs into the quiet, heralding tears, and they shush her. In their nightmare of a voice, Eddie begins to tell her stories. About heroes. About interviews. Anything and everything to fill the quiet, and her mind, with something other than the encroaching dark._

_~_

_Hours later, her eyes open to the sound of shifting rock. Startled, she reaches out into the darkness, but her hands clutch at empty air. Before the panic sets in, she hears voices. Scraping. Something hammering at stone. The walls around her vibrate gently, as though the building itself is shifting above her._

_The voices are getting closer._

_~_

_Later, when Shireen is asked about the accident that took her legs, she just smiles, waves the questions away good-naturedly. For whatever reason, when you wear your scars on the outside people always seem to feel entitled to ask about them. These days the memories are foggier, time easing the terror and pain into something distant and less tangible. The roar of falling stone is just an echo, the taste of dust and blood on her tongue harder to recall._

_Her mother likes to tell her about how delirious she was at first, after hours spent alone in the darkness._

_She likes to recount the way Shireen had been convinced that she wasn’t alone. She even goes so far as to say she invented an imaginary friend._

_Years later, Shireen can still remember the deep, gravel voice filling her nightmare with strange stories. She can feel the warmth surrounding her more vividly than the cold of the stone against her back and thighs. Her fingers can still trace the shape of long claws; do, in fact, retrace the remembered patterns still to help her get to sleep at night._

_When Shireen is asked about the incident, she smiles, and tells them she must have been delirious._

_She never tells them about the boogeyman who kept her company in the dark. She never once admits it, but she knows, in her heart, that it was real._

***

Monsters in the shape of men prowl the streets of every major city; anywhere humanity sits huddled together away from the dark its alter ego lurks just beyond the edges of the firelight, and Eddie’s is no different. These days there is a deadlier terror haunting the shadowy footsteps; tracing their path into the murky underbelly and ensuring that they never find their way back out.

In the far recesses of their mind sit bigger questions than either of them are prepared to answer; what are we now? We only eat bad people, but we still _eat people_ , so what does that make _us_? They’d saved the world once, almost on a whim, and even though their lives are quiet and comfortable now, the _smallness_ of it is stifling. They are bored. They are happier with their harmony yet sinking slowly into misery together. What is their purpose?

More importantly, what do they _want_ their purpose to be?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Eddie asks no one on the streets one day as they are wandering home, and Venom’s shared enough of his memories to get the joke. Neither of them is laughing. A small voice, tinged with fear even in their memory, rings out in the silence.

_You’re an Angel._

_You saved me._

_He’ll never hurt anyone else again_.

Eddie is not now, nor has he ever been, and does not ever want to _be,_ a _hero_.

But for a shining moment, they’d been hers.

And just like the cheesy movie mentors say, you cannot always choose your path. Sometimes it chooses you. All you can do is keep moving forward.

Unfortunately, even scumbags start to pop up on the public’s RADAR if enough of them begin to disappear.

The increasing probability that the Avengers or a similar group will eventually take notice is a constant niggling fear in the very blackest corner of their thoughts, but they do not slow their momentum. Criminals, Eddie has discovered, have a strange shared propensity to spill their guts when they know death is coming for them. For some, it seems to be a final confessional; compelled to use their last moments to shed a dim light on what they had done, why they had done it, perhaps hoping they will understand.

In others, it is the desperate act of an animal lashing out, hoping to ensnare one of its’ fellows to drag into the waiting blackness alongside them.

The reason is irrelevant; the result is the same and slowly Eddie and Venom are wading into the deep waters of a world hidden just below the surface of society. Piece by piece, they slot together scraps of information into a twisting mosaic of a picture, ever-changing as the ripples across the surface of a lake but interwoven all the same.

Almost despite themselves, they become vaguely competent at vigilantism. No longer hunting the night in search of easy meals, waiting to happen upon a villain at the right time, in the right act with negligible witnesses. Instead they anticipate the culprits, act in accordance with leaked intelligence; the harried whispers of one dying man sealing the death warrant of the next.

Their presence grows ever larger in the awareness of their enemies (because these low lifes are as interconnected as the threads of a spider’s web, and the smart ones have noticed their shrinking numbers). Suddenly, the cat and mouse game evolves into something new, and the bad guys start to come for _Venom_.

A small following on social media shares stories and sightings of what they call their ‘black angel’ (Eddie has a serious suspicion he knows who came up with the ill-fitting title).

With good publicity comes the bad; Eddie watches his old friends and contemporaries running articles on the ‘black angel’ menacing their streets, the horrifying lack of bodies, the string of blood-spattered alleyways, back rooms, sewers and alcoves spanning the city with no signs of a corpse. Or its removal.

In the shadows, their enemies come together, become smarter, grow bigger fangs to bear against them. Weapon X, an organization Eddie had sincerely hoped was nothing more than a dark fairy tale, a fake story news reporters chased after endlessly to no avail, reared its insidious head. Unlike the rest they didn’t seek to _kill_ Venom, far worse; they wanted them alive. To throw them back behind a glass cage to poke and prod and test and experiment with, like Drake.

In the darkness of their mind, a pinprick of fear begins to glimmer.

***

Then, there’s the most intrepid of them all: Spiderman. They have to give it to the kid; he’s good. Eddie caught him webbing up a camera in the pitch dark of an alleyway, no doubt relying on the inferiority of human senses to hide him from wandering eyes. Not dark enough to hide him from Venom of course, but how was he to know there was an alien across the street? Hardly a second had passed before the red mask whipped around to look right at them. Only the equally impossible speed of their own movements saved them from being caught staring.

Multiple times now, they’d brushed past the vigilante; often just after they’d finished ‘dinner;’ always too close for comfort.

***

Editing is as fulfilling as it is boring, and after a day spent toiling away there’s a stockpile of restless energy buzzing through their veins.

These days there is an equally large list of names burning holes in their mind.

Despite their restlessness, the lull in momentum allows their thoughts to wander, and naturally sink into the waiting mire of conspiracy devouring their sanity whenever they allow it time to sink in its teeth.

Susie is a nice girl; she sells chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of the corner store that sells Venom’s favorite chocolate bars. She’s been gone for a week. No one knows where she lived, where to start looking for her. By the time they broke down and scented their way to what must have been her apartment, the place was empty; all the smells were old.

Frank sleeps in the small park meant to brighten up their part of town. Or he had, until three days ago. The thick old sleeping bag was still sitting under a nearby tree, stuffed to the brim with newspaper, no sign of the man.

Edyth is a kind girl. Old. Worn down. Always has a smile for them when they walk by, perhaps because the dollars they leave her pay for the breadcrumbs she keeps feeding those damn pigeons (even though they go nuts when Venom comes near). The birds still flock to the stoop she’d favored, though she hasn’t been by to feed them in nearly a week.

At first, Eddie tried to put it from his mind; if he tried hard enough everything was explainable. People move on. The LIFE foundation was _done_. Carlton Drake wasn’t around to go snatching innocent people off the streets; they’d made damn sure of that.

Then comes the worry that, perhaps, these people are disappearing because of _Eddie_. Because the men who had turned ‘round and started hunting them from the shadows saw an opportunity; saw Eddie repeatedly visiting these people, showing an interest. Perhaps they saw an easy way to get to _them_.

So, they hunt. They stay as far from people as they possibly can; and with their new awareness, they _watch_.

“Fred”, as they have mentally dubbed the man, seems nice enough, though they purposely never go near him. He sleeps on an old rug near a dilapidated bridge.

“Janice” walks home the same way, every night. Gets off the same bus, unlocks the same green door. She’s never been late before.

“John” delivers groceries to several families on the street.

“Earl” comes ambling home in filthy overalls every evening as the sun sets and goes into his dark apartment alone.

They watch the world around them with a desperate paranoia.

They watch the neighborhood like a hawk, until they build a pattern of life for every person in it. Eddie knows what time to expect the man across the street to turn the lights off and tuck in for the night. They know when their neighbors go out to walk the tiny dog they pretend not to have in their apartment.

They notice when Janice fails to come home one night.

Note the morning Fred’s rugs catch the morning sun, empty.

Eddie has purposely never spoken with these people. Even if the bastards pulling the strings in the shadows know who _they_ are, this doesn’t add up. This isn’t about Eddie.

Which means they have no idea what’s happening to these people, or why.

They have killed dozens of rapists, human traffickers, murderers; men and women working together in the shadows. They have pieced together details and names and coworkers and business deals and a million tiny things into an intricate pattern, just starting to take shape. They have learned enough to know that they know next to nothing.

Like Hercules and the hydra, no matter how many heads they bite off, there are always two more waiting in the dark. This beast has to be dug up at the roots, its heart cut out. Preferably still beating. Eddie can feel the shape of how they operate, the framework ticking over dutifully in the shadows, but it will take more than them to snuff it out.

It must be obliterated completely; if even one cell escapes it will metastasize to another part of the city, of the country, regrow. It’s more than they can accomplish alone.

“ _Fuck_.” He emphatically informs the darkness.

Venom shares the sentiment, rumbling discontentedly in their chest.

***

The lobby of the Avengers compound is precisely what Eddie imagined it would be, complete with pretentious doormen and a suit trying way too hard to be frightening that comes curbside to valet his vehicle and clearly is not prepared for anything on two wheels.

The tall sweeping windows that just keep on going _up_ remind Eddie of the office building they’d broken into ages ago, when Venom was still fresh, and V laughs at the shiver of fear sliding up his spine (still happy to mock him for his lingering fear of heights). Silent automatic doors usher them into a large open entryway that manages to be both spread out and bustling, and they pick their way past tasteful pillars, decorative plants and milling uniforms to the long desk running the length of the farthest wall.

A receptionist is waiting for him, wearing the bored expression of one who has seen it all and refuses to be phased by something as run-of-the-mill as an infamous reporter. Still, she doesn’t quite manage to hide the manic energy of her excitement; evidenced by the too-bright alertness of her eyes following his approach, the bright spark of her anticipation cracks like pop rocks on their tongue.

His “Hello” and accompanying smile don’t seem to go amiss, a faint blush staining her cheeks despite the deliberate scowl plastered over her features. “I’m Eddie Brock, I’m here to meet with the, uh, Avengers?” It sounds just as absurd out loud as it did in his own head and not for the first time, Eddie contemplates turning on his heel and high tailing it out of here.

He considers it coming to their senses, but Venom digs their heels in and tightens their grip on the stone countertop, anchoring them until the panic and fight drains out of him.

Coming here was the final decision of nearly three weeks’ worth of discourse, running over every option their combined wit could scrape up for even _an iota_ of a better plan. A slightly worse but still workable plan. A _terrible_ _plan_ that could _possibly kill_ _them_ but would at least spare the innocent people vanishing from the streets to turn up as mindless nothings of themselves (if they turned up at all) would have been preferable.

The enduring truth of the matter is that despite how many bad people they kill more keep turning up, and the puppet masters pulling the strings are covering their tracks too well for Eddie to expose them. People are missing and they just don’t have it in them not to care.

Hence their presence here, in the den of legalized monsters who are far better equipped to handle this sort of thing. Unfortunately, they are also well equipped to handle things such as _Venom_ , and far less likely, in Eddie’s opinion, to see them as a “good-guy.”

Melinda, as her name tag labels her, finishes fussing with a perfectly arranged stack of paperwork and presents it over the countertop to Eddie, flipping open the first page of what looks to be the mother of all non-disclosure agreements and instructing him to start reading after the paragraph marked one. Initial every time you see a blank, etcetera. They scan the open page with progressively wider eyes and there is no force on earth that is going to have Eddie reading this whole thing, but when he selects a pen from the waiting holder beside them and applies it to the first blank, she positively _simmers._

“Sir, you have to _read_ the document. It isn’t a common NDA, there are several _very_ specific clauses and nuances in the verbiage and S.H.I.E.L.D. does _not_ accept ‘I did not know’ as a valid answer when the document has been… has been… breached.” Eddie’s head comes up at the pause; the way her tirade peters off abruptly into breathlessness.

Surprise and something not unlike awe appears to have overtaken her; attention fixed firmly on something over Eddie’s shoulder and he turns just in time to intercept the welcoming clap of a firm hand on their shoulder as _Tony Stark_ walks right up and nearly bowls them over with the power of his presence.

Tony takes their hand and holds on tight, longer than is normal, gaze boring into their own and the sensation of something crawling beneath their skin in response to the subsequent discomfiture is probably not a phantom one in their case. Stark takes it in stride; if anything, his fingers dig in to gain a firmer grip beneath his pleasant “nice to meet you, Mr. Brock.”

“Mr. Stark” they manage after a moment of stunned silence in which the man in question ghosts a hand down their arm to free the paperwork from Eddie’s fingers and set in back on the desk. They half expect the receptionist to go off on another rant but the gob-smacked expression on her face makes it clear her attention is firmly elsewhere. “I didn’t expect you to meet me in the lobby,” a statement, which is both true and also very much a question, since the previous hustle surrounding them has ground to a _crawl_. The normal personnel are clearly taken just as off guard by the situation as Eddie, judging by the shocked double-takes and wide-eyed, worried glances from guards who had been stoic-as-you-please just moments before.

Stark’s hands are cool where they surround their own and clap their shoulder. Neither of them is sure whether they are able to entirely stifle the reflexive shudder of venom beneath Eddie’s skin. Stark only grabs on tighter, python securing his prey against attempted escape, sliding a companionable arm around their shoulders and leading them off towards a nondescript doorway.

He carries on as they go about the newest Stark Industries project in clean power, Eddie’ shocked mind making ‘hmm’s and ‘ah’s in all the right places, playing along with the overt subterfuge and taking in the startled looks from around the lobby. In one fell swoop the man has derailed the receptionist’s paperwork efforts, sowed the seeds of misdirection for the purpose of Eddie’s presence, and used what was clearly an uncharacteristic appearance (likely the first time in recent memory anyone has seen Tony Stark walk _towards_ a reporter) to take the attention off of Eddie _entirely_.

Past the first doorway Stark steps away but keeps a firm hand at their elbow, gesturing wildly with his free appendage and giving off every overt appearance of a gracious host preparing for an interview; but in the small snatches of direct eye contact Eddie catches beneath the glasses, he senses something else entirely simmering beneath the surface.

It could be excitement, fear, any number of emotions sharpening the scalpel of Stark’s gaze when it lands upon them; Eddie doesn’t know the man well enough to tell which (avoiding a cough in response to the man’s cologne is all they can manage olfactorily) but he can feel the weight of the man’s intelligence focusing on them as they transition to the emptier hallways.

Before their eyes, Stark appears to shed layer after layer of himself the further they travel from the public passages, and by the time he ushers them over the threshold of an impressive security airlock he is very nearly an entirely different man.

Being his sole focus at this point is unsettling, something about the way he looks at them speaks to an intimate knowledge, like he somehow _knows_ them despite neither man having ever met.

“Look. There are a few people waiting to hear what you have to say, and while I assure you that they will listen, not all of them are going to like it. In fact, most of them are going to be unpleasant about it.” And with that absolutely cryptic warning, he opens the heavy doors.

Walking into a hushed room containing a handful of Avengers and a few people he doesn’t recognize is not better; the hostility in the room raises their hackles and while they manage not to _actually growl_ in response, it is a close thing.

Tony seems to expect the atmosphere, sweeping in past Eddie and pulling a chair out for them at the nearest head of the table before flopping himself theatrically into the one just beside it. Eddie notes that, with the exception of Stark, the nearest occupied chair is nearly ten feet away. Not a subtle bunch, for an organization of politicos and spies. Unlike a normal meeting, or literally any other situation in his life that involved walking into a room containing people who were presumably there to meet with him, not a word has been uttered since the door cracked open. The silence is jarring after the non-stop monologue Stark kept up on the way over.

In lieu of greeting there is a round of glares exchanged between Stark and the rest, followed by a nearly even split of individuals swiveling to glower directly at Eddie, and the rest who avert their gaze completely. As the room in question is devoid of any decoration, this leads to a very childish employment of staring at blank walls and chipped ceiling tiles.

In short, not what Eddie had expected from a meeting with the Avengers, not that he had ever once thought he would find himself in this position.

After a solid minute spent with his eyebrow raised and every petty instinct Eddie and Venom shared between them (a substantial number) urging them to give the fuckers something worth staring at… they finally beat the desire down and sit in the proffered chair, starting when Stark sits forward to snatch the thick file out from under their arm and begin rummaging without ceremony. He rifles through the papers, scattering the discarded bits about the table in a haphazard fashion; keeping a few select sheets in a neat stack before him.

Eddie’s opposite at the other end of the table is possibly trying to light Stark’s hair ablaze with the intensity of his glare, which ultimately has no effect on its target. “Are you going to share with the class, Stark?”

To his credit, Iron Man does not move a single muscle in response to the acidic demand; just continues to peruse the paperwork Eddie had compiled against the kidnappers.

“ _Stark?_ ” The man practically _snarls_.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want to look at these? Because I was under the impression you were going to ignore Brock completely and, by extension, his case.”

“ _His_ case” scrapes out past the bald man’s lips with all the desiccating dryness of the Sahara. Eddie is struck by the disturbing notion that they might not be talking about the criminals he’d come to reveal.

The file snaps shut like a gunshot in the quiet of the room and three pictures shoot out from Stark’s hands like paper bullets as he flings them down in front on the others, rising from his chair and leaving it swinging listlessly behind him.

“You ignored this long enough for it to grow unrestrained. People have been going missing left and right for _weeks_ , Fury, and you have done fuck-all about it, and don’t give me that ‘my people looked into it’ bullshit” he raises the volume when the man opens his mouth to protest, “because a laid off reporter did more credible surveillance work than all your shadowy goons combined.”

There is a vein ticking steadily in the man’s forehead. “Fury,” Stark had called him. Just Eddie’s luck, that the director himself would come down to sit in on this. One long breath blown out through his nostrils later, he drops his eye to the photographs, three mugshots captured on a zoomed-in cellphone, not the best imagery in the world but it was enough. Besides, Eddie and Venom can recall their faces with startling clarity, despite the distance.

The cyclopean gaze shifts again, comes to rest squarely on Eddie and once more he feels like a bug under a magnifying glass, Fury gives off the impression that he knows far more about them than Eddie is comfortable with.

“All right _Mr. Brock_ , I’m listening.” As if the words break some kind of spell, the rest swivel to look at them, the pictures, the scattered notes and articles. Fury meets their gaze over his steepled fingers and remains silent throughout the proceedings, though the sharp woman at his side types relentlessly into a tablet. Forget the meat of the matter; her questions cut straight through to the _bone_.

Slowly, the focus shifts from Eddie to the room at large, the men and women querying each other, tossing out opinions and conjecture left and right, and they are more than happy to sit back and let them have the floor. Eddie is far more comfortable as a bystander than the man in the limelight these days.

While the group squabbles and plans, between the pointed questions thrown his way, they replay the dialogue that had sound-tracked their journey through the halls. They had been too busy fretting at the time to genuinely listen, but Stark had opened with a comment on his newest energy project: the man is now the foremost research and developer into clean, renewable energy. After that, a few choice comments stand out in their mind:

“Love what you did with the Life Foundation; I was not a fan of how Drake did business. Narrow focus for such big vision.”

“Huge fan of the Brock Report, real bummer when you didn’t get back into it; I loved it. You have a real talent, digging up the sides of people they never want exposed.”

“Lucky for me, I don’t have any unexposed sides left.” The blueish tint of Stark’s glasses probably do an amazing job of hiding the impressive dark blotches under his eyes from people with duller vision. “You’d be surprised how much harder it is to be Iron Man than a billionaire. I wouldn’t wish this kind of notoriety on my worst enemy. Mostly because Loki’d probably _enjoy_ it.” The last bit had been mumbled beneath his breath. Once inside the ‘Inner Sanctum,’ they had been fixed with a heavy look, the weight of it present even in their memory, still with no idea how to interpret it.

They lose track of minutes, lost in their reverie, until a tingling in their perception brings them back to the surface: Stark in staring at them. The chair swivels silently as they turn slightly to regard him in turn, Eddie raising the same eyebrow and just as it had before, it fails to illicit the desired result.

Eddie stares. Stark barely bats an eyelash. They add the second eyebrow. He smiles.

They are about to crack a smile of their own when Fury’s voices whips through the room; “something you’d like to share with the class?”

Stark’s smile goes hard around the edges as he spins to face the room; half insolent brat, half untouchable mastermind.

“Maybe.” Another smile. “Depends how the class reacts.”

“Cut the crap, Stark.”

“Alright, you asked for it,” comes out barely above a whisper and Eddie wonders if Stark’s aware that they can hear him. The words he belts out next at normal volume take them by surprise. “Truth or truth: you don’t intend to let Brock walk out of this building tonight unless he’s in your _protective_ ” (here Stark pantomimes an eccentric approximation of air quotes) “custody, and I use the term ‘walk’ here a bit liberally, since I’m pretty sure he’d be trussed up as tightly as you could manage, for _safety_.”

Fury doesn’t bat an eyelash.

A cold deluge of fear slides through them, freezing them solid. Their heart stutter steps. Venom makes them breathe, simmering beneath their skin, primed to react to an attack but unsure how to handle this one. Stark’s solid presence at their side is the only thing that keeps them from bolting, super heroes be damned, and on some level still capable of rational thought, they register how asinine it is for them to trust a man they just met with something as sanctimonious as their _freedom_ at stake.

Eddie wouldn’t last five minutes in SHIELD custody without revealing their inhuman nature.

Not that running from the room and bulking up into a giant alien monster would help their case in any way.

The argument that ensues probably lasts for only minutes, but to them it feels likes _days_. Somewhere between the front entrance and this office-space-nightmare of a conference room, they had allowed Stark’s easy-going composure to infect them with a (clearly false) sense of security. The largest threat to their freedom is and always has been the very people in this room, and they had bafflingly managed to forget it for a moment. Tony had treated them normally from the moment he met them in the lobby. Had touched them, even; often.

One human being nice to them and they had gone _soft_ , how utterly pathetic is _that_?

The words are flying rapid-fire fast through the room, Stark and Fury dominating the dialogue, and both are up and on their feet within the first few sentences. By the time their voices settle back into something approaching a normal register Venom and Eddie have worked out the rough edges of the deal taking shape.

They can go into SHIELD custody for protection until this entire mess is sorted out, which could be days, weeks, or god knows how long depending on SHIELD’s interpretation of ‘sorted.’ It could be _years_ before every last loose threat touching the convoluted web Eddie uncovered is in custody.

Or, he can accept Stark’s offer.

The few interjections they attempt are shot down before they can take flight; no amount of insistence that supervision is unnecessary holds any water weight against Fury. To all appearances he wants what’s best for Eddie’s safety, but the longer this drags on the more they are beginning to suspect that Fury simply wants them under his watchful eye, their safety nothing more than the smokescreen behind which he’s camouflaging his true intentions, whatever those may be.

Stark leans back from his battle-stance (arms braced wide on the conference table the better to spit ichor and brimstone across the war zone at the Director on the other side) and looks directly at Eddie. The deep shadows under the man’s eyes are mirror images of their own, though Stark wears them better.

It looks like they have a choice to make.

Except that it isn’t really a choice at all, is it? Between the man they _know_ is a devil, and the one who’s damned well devilish but just possibly _on their side_.

They are adrift, floundering for purchase on anything resembling solid ground, but there is nothing here to ground themselves against. Surprisingly, it is the rigid assistant who breaks into their panic with a gentle (for a bureaucrat) suggestion. “Mr. Brock, this is an important decision, why don’t you take a night to think it over?”

Eddie considers it a miracle that his voice neither shakes nor takes on any lower frequencies when he finally gets his mouth to connect to his brain.

“I’m going with door number two.” The sarcasm is a bonus, one Stark seems to appreciate if the minuscule flinch of a smirk is any indication. Despite his choice of words, their meaning is blatantly clear, and it is immediately evident that Stark’s the only one in the room who is at all pleased with the development. The blond mountain near their side of the table (who Eddie is ninety percent certain is Captain America in casual clothing) opens his mouth to comment, but it appears that the discussion floor is closed, as far as Stark is concerned.

“We’re done here” he spits to the room at large, offering a hand to help a still-numb Eddie out of the chair.

They sweep out of the room before the rest can get their act together (the human ones anyway, it is clear a few of them know more than they let on and are simply content to let stark off to his own devices).

Stark leads them down twisting corridors and they follow without conscious input from either brain, their mind caught replaying the preceding arguments on loop until Stark brings them to a stop before a sliding door.

It opens into a lab that is cluttered and neat at once and Stark sheds yet another layer of skin. The man before them is even more genuine in a new way, and three times as tired.

“Care for a drink?” And man does he ever, but poison doesn’t sit well with Venom in his system.

“Water” they croak out between dry lips.

A raised eyebrow, but altogether a lack of surprise that adds fuel to the fire of Eddie’s worried suspicions. The glass is smooth and cool in his hand; Tony’s fingers hot where they meet passing off the glass.

They stand awkwardly in the organized chaos, look around, fidget, stare back at the man leaning against his worktop and sipping what looks like whiskey but smells like nothing; staring at them openly over the rim of his glass.

“So,” Stark breaks into the silence, as subtle as his vibrant colored Iron Man suit, “let me ask you something.” The laboratory spaces are unnerving in their explicitly sharp lines, illuminated by too-bright LEDs reflecting off nearly every surface and everywhere they look the echoes of an underground testing facility haunt them. The only comfort comes from the sharp disparity of controlled chaos cluttering practically every horizonal surface. This is the tinkering ground of a modern-day Michael Angelo, perpetually in motion creating something new; seldom able to complete a project before the next one comes along to spirit his attention away from its’ predecessor.

Venom rankles beneath their skin and turns to Stark as casually as they can, given the unexpected circumstances and unfamiliar space.

“Shoot” they toss out, the cheeky half smirk matched by something equally unsure and simultaneously amused in Stark. They are anticipating a verbal comment, not a very-fast-for-a-human hand snapping out to snatch a small object from the nearest pocket of clutter and arc it with commendable aim into the dead center of their chest.

Eddie isn’t above admitting that he is clumsy at times ( **always** ), but getting his hands stuck in the pockets of his jacket when he starts and flails and fails miserably to extricate a limb and catch the damn thing before it hits him rankles.

For his part, Stark observes without comment or even facial shift. He betrays nothing in response to their raised eyebrow, just settles back against a counter, sinking into the surrounding tid-bits and baubles as though they are a part of him.

Equal parts flabbergasted and intrigued, they inspect the smooth oval. Both hands come up to feel along a subtle seam running the length of it and sure enough, a small effort lifts a gentle spring-assisted lid.

Resting in their own soft velvet indents are two strips of brushed metal, each a half inch think, perhaps three long, the angular lines contouring their surface glinting gently in the harsh light.

Two raised eyebrows yield little more than a widening of the smirk, until they move to close the lid and toss the thing back and Stark finally springs into action, shoving gracefully away from the countertop (to a lamentable chorus of falling odds and ends, the clatter of shifting metal).

An indecipherable waving of the hand above his shoulder results in dimmed lights and the appearance of several holo-screens, each displaying various angles of a few notable moments of Eddie and Venom’s combined lives, and the shock of it roots them to the smooth tile floor like one of Tony’s motionless machines. Their heart thunders: their instincts scream incoherently against a threat they don’t know how to properly identify, let alone mitigate; and finally, a warm hand settles over their own and startles them all over again.

“It’s sound, isn’t it?”

His voice is unexpectedly gentle, and they notice that the holograms are silent. Still, looking at their combined form twisting into grotesque shapes, jumping in and back away from Eddie’s skin, resonates into their very bones. The memory of that pain is still terribly fresh in their mind. Perhaps always will be.

Tony keeps his hand on theirs, takes the little box away with the other and moves to the side to peer at the moving screens alongside them. Reflexively turning their hand to grip his is not born of any conscious thought, and fortunately the man takes it in stride, grips tighter, starts to ramble as they slowly reign themselves in.

“It was here first, the asshat neighbor you had” he’s gesturing at one of the smaller screens, Eddie standing in his hallway speaking with his neighbor the night he thought he was losing his mind, but the viewpoint is alien. He’s looking in on themselves through the window. “But I admit I didn’t correlate it at the time, I thought it was probably just sensitivity, ya know? Alien species, might as well assume your senses functioned differently. Then this.”

He waves another screen over, a cut of them from below, standing atop the news building like some ghastly version of King Kong, and he can feel the hairs rising on the back of his neck remembering the height, the vertigo, the absolute terror coming next as he watches the airplane closing in on them from behind, preparing to rend their peaceful moment and very nearly kill them both. Stark pauses mercilessly mid-slide, the still frame of their separating forms worse than any horror film Eddie’s ever seen. Stark’s pointing at various strings, rambling about frequencies and waves and afterimages and the evidence he’d parsed from it all, but Eddie barely hears more than the roaring of an engine from his nightmares.

An aggressive flick and the scene becomes grainy; lower quality like a cheap security feed and he squints to try and grasp the details, identify the room from this obscure angle… and then he stumbles through a sliding door, Anne fast on his heels and with a sickening jolt they recognize the MRI room. Together, they watch their excruciating severance in all its vivid, low-res glory.

Eddie can feel himself starting to sweat. Venom curls into a tight seething ball weighting down the core of his chest, as far into the center of themselves as he can get, neither of them enjoying the reminder of how easy it is to break their combined hold.

In amidst the unpleasant memories settles the new and dangerous revelation that their assumed anonymity, their _security_ , has been nothing more than illusion. This man has known about them from the start. Possibly for longer than Eddie himself knew.

The monologue continues through observation after correlation, scientific theory and fascination and what sounds like admiration running alongside the SWAT fiasco and some truly horrendous footage of the rocket disaster, from what looks like a combination of security cameras and enhanced cellphone video.

Stark’s winding down, glancing over at Eddie and appearing to notice their discomfort for the first time, despite the death grip enclosing his hand. Pausing mid-sentence, he clears his throat and extricates his hand from theirs, looking uncomfortable and possibly even a little bit ashamed.

“Right, that shit looked painful. Obviously not something you would want thrown back at you. Sensitivity, not really my strong suit.” He coughs again, fiddles with the box, looks everywhere but at Eddie, and they watch as his face transforms from discomfort, flashing with self-directed anger, into steadfast determination as he meets their eyes again, dead-on. “Point is; high decibels are harmful. They clearly cause you pain. In some circumstances they result in involuntary separation, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that’s a pretty huge vulnerability.”

The pause here stretches on, as though Stark expects them to have something coherent to say after the smartest, and very possibly most _dangerous_ , man on the planet has revealed that he knows their greatest weakness. And very unnecessarily pointed out just how gigantic a liability it really is. Forget having to avoid concerts, construction work, airports, you name it: all it would take is a few well-informed hooligans with a couple based-out boomboxes and Eddie and V would be in for a world of trouble.

Before they can work themselves up into a proper frenzy over the unbelievably horrible luck they have and the enormity of the threat they are currently facing, Stark’s fishing the silver bands out of the box and approaching again. He stops an arm’s length away, his hands extended out in front of him like Frankenstein’s monster, one metal strip dangling from each set of his fingers.

He pauses there as if expecting Eddie to simply reach out and let himself be cuffed.

Perhaps this has all been some elaborate ruse, the entire organization out to get them from the start, the meeting a trap and everything else pandering to the bored genius who wants to have one over on the alien. Eddie certainly never thought they’d be arrested by _Tony Stark_.

Scoffing, Stark slaps one band against his own wrist and holds it before their face in demonstration. Before their eyes, the edges of the metal melt, seeping around his wrist and forming a loose band; nothing outwardly strange, just an innocuous and strangely masculine bit of jewelry. “They’re dampeners.”

Eddie has the sick feeling they’ve found their breaking point for shock. He’s reasonably certain Stark just blew straight past their threshold and pushed them full circle back into curious disbelief, and the curiosity prompts them to find their voice again.

“Okay, wow.” On second thought, maybe they weren’t quite ready for words. Stark doesn’t look impressed at their tone. Eddie takes a page from Stark’s book, clears his throat, makes another stab in the dark to get this conversation back on its one-sided track. “What do you mean, what’s a dampener?” Apparently, it’s the magic phrase; Stark’s smirk transforms into a proud smile as he brandishes the other band and offers it to Eddie.

“Ever heard of sound-cancelling headphones?”

“Yea.” He reaches towards the band and hesitates, then Venom’s riding shotgun and their hand blurs, snatching the bauble up and bringing to their face in an eye-blink.

Stark looks startled and pleased at the same time. “Rude.” He mumbles, but Venom just rumbles and turns the thing this way and that, inspecting it as Stark continues.

“These work along the same principle, infinitely more complicated, obviously, but together they analyze ambient sound waves and emit a frequency to neutralize them. So far, I have them 100% effective to 150 decibels, anything above that and you’re looking at exponential seepage, but it’s still going to dampen it enough for you to tolerate it. I assume. It’s been kind of difficult running simulations for these things without any real data, or any hard numbers to test them against, aside from the known variables of jet engines and rocket launches.”

Words have failed the both of them at this point, and Eddie is staring at the bracelet in disbelief, Venom bleeding over his hand to slide against its surface in something close to wonder. Then they look up into Stark’s eyes and what they see there is just as baffling.

He’s amused. Very clearly proud of his creation. Enjoying their stunned reaction. Happy. Calm. Completely at peace with handing over an antidote to their only tangible weakness (not including fire, but really that one applies to any organic compound, so…). Behind Stark’s shoulder the reels are still playing, Venom eating a guy in Mrs. Chen’s store. The SWAT team losing several heads in the smoke-filled chaos. A man in a street being eaten before the shattered remains of Eddie’s wrecked bike.

This man is very obviously well informed of their activities. He knows what they are. He knows what they have done and likely will continue to do. He knows their weakness and has chosen not to exploit it. Quite the contrary…

“I eat people” is not what Eddie would have chosen to say if he had applied any conscious input from his brain.

Stark’s eyes do not stray from theirs for a second. They do not back down, or shy away, or waver. They harden, become darker, and somehow this man becomes even more terrifying then he was before, as the sole proprietor of all of Eddie’s best kept secrets. “I kill people. Lots of them. There’s not a member of this team that doesn’t come with a body count and Fury and his goons aren’t any different. You kill bad people. You defend yourself. Sometimes others. Let’s not split hairs over what happens to the bodies.”

It turns out Eddie had another level of shock left after all. Huh.

“Put them on, Brock. I want to see what these babies can do” he smirks. They obey. The metal is still warm from Stark’s skin as it slides comfortably onto theirs. The light in Stark’s eyes is nothing short of _unholy glee_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom had lost countless hours of sleep thinking over the possible outcomes of their meeting with the Avengers, but never in a million years could they have imagined that Tony Stark would come to their rescue. Had, in fact, been looking out for them from the very beginning. Having dodged the grasp of SHIELD (for now) they try to settle into the bizarre new reality that is their life in the Avengers compound, and the overwhelming unpredictability of their interactions with one Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, ok, so o.o  
> Thank you guys so much for reading and commenting, you take my breath away every time >,< I hope I can live up to what I'm trying to accomplish here. Long chapter is long. Bear with me, I'ma try for updates every sunday. I have a hard outline of where everything is going and about 50% of the rest written, so I like my chances :D
> 
> EDIT:I am going to put my back into it and update this beast soon, bear with me. Life tried to kick my butt, but I am back at it!

They place the small box on the hotel countertop when they return that night; just as late as they had planned, but for entirely different reasons than anticipated. Clean, fed and attempting to put their mind to rest for the evening, they lean against the cold laminate by the open lid and consider the unexpected gift inside.

Sonic dampeners, Stark had said. The Stark tech is cool to the touch, two innocuous gunmetal bands, matte with a faint inlay of black and lighter grey highlight crisscrossing the surface in intricate patterns that somehow manage to look random. They are sleek; far too fashionable to be anything that Eddie owns, but… it suits him. Suits them. He can envision them glittering over the lustrous black of Venom’s skin. Or peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his best jacket.

Eddie strokes a fingertip along the spine of one band, and on the second stroke the grained metal springs to life: nanites slither between their fingers like molten metal snakes, sealing around his wrist in a protective ouroboros. They flex, Venom erupting from his palm to encase the entire arm and faster than their eye can follow, the metal warps to match. It feels like a part of them, seamlessly insinuating itself amongst their movements, just as it had in the lab.

By Eddie’s opposite elbow, there rests an impressively hefty stack of bureaucratic bull shit (necessary legal documentation, the stiff suit assistant had called it) he was expected to complete for SHIELD by the morning. Despite their words in the conference room, Agent Hill had insisted he take the night to think it over, producing the NDA from the receptionist’s desk from her briefcase like a practiced magician and handing it over on their way out of the building.

There are calculated risks every man takes in life, and this has sure as hell been one of theirs. To be fair, legal jargon is the least of the evils they could have saddled themselves with, so Eddie does not have much room to complain; but he doesn’t intend to let logic get in the way of healthy venting.

Venom has been quiet. They both have, processing the new shades of their future, the strange shapes forming in the mists on the horizon, considering the various paths available and weighing the benefits and risks of each. The long and short of the matter is that they could have come out of this deal much worse off, and despite the leap of faith it required, coming to the Avengers was still the best choice they could have made. Even now, they are both sure it was the right choice.

As expected, the experience was mostly unpleasant (aside from Stark) and the majority of the people they had spoken with fell somewhere on the spectrum of quietly distrustful to openly hostile (except for Stark), but the information they provided was at least taken at face value and treated credibly. Not just by Iron Man, but by all assembled, and if the result is fewer people across the country disappearing into the night, then it will all be worth it.

In the short term, however, they face the very thing they had been avoiding in the shadows; oversight. Management. An organization watching over their shoulder, painfully aware of what they got up to in the dark. A life with SHIELD meant signing over their freedom. They would live in SHIELD approved housing, directly on sight at first, until their “status could be ascertained.”

They had set a poorly defined marker which lacked definition. It was unclear how long it would take to gain back some semblance of autonomy, instead of living in a facility and being little more than a glorified lab rat who could potentially take supervised strolls around the city. And that was _without_ SHIELD discovering their ‘duality.’

On the other (and far more enticing) hand, is Tony Stark.

Eddie had never met the billionaire turned superhero, never thought he _would_ to be honest, and even in his wildest dreams the monolithic individual he’d built him up to be _still_ couldn’t hold a candle to the man himself. Stark was a force of nature. He was intelligent, well informed, patient where it counted. When he finally made a move, it was only after he had achieved checkmate, his opponent just hadn’t had time to see it yet. Now, Eddie is caught in that beautiful mind, and it is far less upsetting than it probably should be.

Sure, the man’s main offensive had been against SHIELD, backing them into a rigid corner with legalities, promises of keeping them tied up in ugly legal battles the likes of which they’d never before seen, seemingly all for Eddie. But in the end, it had to be their decision to turn down SHIELD’s offer. To choose Tony Stark’s instead. The man knew it, and he had made the choice all too easy to make.

Eddie and Venom had been offered far more than a secret weapon today. They had been made an offer; one that was far too preferable to ignore. In fact, it wasn’t even really a choice. It was string-less (or rather, the strings attached to this deal were more of a bonus in their eyes than any sort of boon) offer of assistance, and whether Stark’s motivations were to get one over on SHIELD, altruistically help Venom, or something else entirely his own that Eddie couldn’t parse, hardly mattered.

All they had to do was say no to SHIELD, and they would have all the legal, political and public backing that Tony Stark had to offer (which was a lot, to say the least).

He had requested (where SHIELD had made demands) for Eddie to stay at the Avengers compound until the direct threat to his person could be determined and neutralized. Though they had not defined them today, Stark was adamant there would be clearly delineated benchmarks to quantify what that meant.

Later, alone, came the request to join him in the lab occasionally, to study the intricacies of an interspecies symbiotic relationship such as theirs, to test their limitations and strengths in ways they would not be able to otherwise, all of which they would ultimately benefit from.

They would receive help from the Avengers (mostly from Stark, but apparently the rest were invested enough in preventing the enemy from doing whatever it is Eddie and Venom had scented them doing to help put a stop to it), access to their spaces, and most importantly, their protection. Presumably even from SHIELD.

To say that Fury and his assistant (Hill, he remembers them calling her) were displeased would be a grievous understatement. They had stormed from the building in a flurry of paper-work and heated parting shots, leaving Eddie with an encyclopedic set of intake forms and a quietly smug Stark. The remaining Avengers had filed out mostly in silence, though Captain America at least had the decency to look them in the eye, shake their hand and finally produce an introduction, even if he did look mildly sick about it (Eddie didn’t think much of it; his reputation as a reporter alone tended to have that effect on people).

The clincher was knowledge. SHIELD was not known for its tolerance, Asgardians and Dr. Banner aside; the greater government agencies even less so. Keeping Venom a secret inside their facility would be impossible. Hiding it from the Avengers would have been just as difficult, if not for the fact that Stark already _knew_. He knew everything and had left them alone thus far. Armed with knowledge, the man had laid the groundwork to provide them with a place to stay, out of the public (and SHIELD’s) eye, safe as possible from assault, and best of all, with the autonomy to come and go as they pleased.

Presumably, his foreknowledge led him to assume that they would continue hunting at night. He hadn’t given them any indication that he disapproved of what they were doing; that he wanted them to stop. Whether or not the rest would treat them with the same equanimity if they found out was yet to be seen but still…

Compared to SHIELD the choice was already made.

Content with their reasoning, and feeling spiteful after the drudge of a meeting, Eddie feels like doing something symbolic. Venom rumbles, a particular variant that means much the same as rolling his eyes but sends a tendril out to ignite the stove flame for Eddie. The familiar creeping sensation takes over half of his face, and Eddie smiles wide, knowing his other half will match it. The paperwork goes up fast, the heat wafting against their face and instantaneously they realize how dumb a move this is; spinning as one to the sink behind them, Venom turning the tap as Eddie thrusts the curling papers in with both hands.

One heartbeat, two, a few deep breaths filled with paper smoke (startlingly different from the noxious stink of burning rocket fuel; Venom’s scorched flesh) and slowly Eddie’s fingers unclench. Venom turns the water off. They lean heavily against the sink and consider the sodden charcoal mush coating the bottom and he can’t tell which of them is the first to laugh, but once it starts they can’t stop, deep guffaws racking their whole frame, rattling the cutlery in the drawers with the force of it.

“You are such a _loser_ , why did you let me do that?” Eddie wheezes out between gasping chuckles.

The sharp smack of a tentacle barely even stings. **“ _You_ wanted to be _symbolic_.” **Venom mocks him, no malice in it. **“You are the loser Eddie. You nearly shit your pants.”** Tears are burning pleasantly at the corners of his eyes.

“ _We_ are losers. Losers who don’t like fire.” Eddie puffs out a final huff of laughter, expelling the last tendrils of adrenaline the flame brought on, the scorching heat nothing in comparison to the explosion that had nearly killed them, but still far too similar for comfort.

The soggy mush splashes horribly into the trashcan, the small bits of ash left in the sink rinse easily down the drain and off their hands, and despite the radical changes they face in the coming days Eddie feels strangely calm; they both do. They are just about to settle in on the couch for a movie (they have been working through classic horror films lately) when a small movement cuts through the corner of their eye.

Their head whips to the side fast enough to blur the scenery and there it is, hovering like an overlarge hummingbird: a drone. Drone technology is highly proliferated these days, but no matter what form it takes, Stark tech is easy to distinguish from the competition. Frozen, they consider one another, them from the couch, and it from its motionless point in the air, until they break the stale mate with a small wave, a grin. He isn’t expecting anything, if Eddie took the time to consider it, he would assume that an AI is controlling the bot, monitoring, perhaps storing the footage for later review by human eyes or more expansive algorithms. Instead, the drone dips towards its forward quarter and then back up without so much as losing altitude, and the degree to which it resembles the inclining of a head, tip of the hat, is _uncanny_. It is humorous. It is human.

It is Stark.

Hovering outside their window.

Bewildered by their lack of internal reaction, Eddie turns back to the TV. A quarter of the way into Frankenstein, a streak of reflective metal signals the drone’s departure. They get the feeling it hasn’t gone too far.

They should be disturbed. Creeped out. They aren’t. If anything, they feel strangely… safe.

***

The Avengers building is no less opulent in the morning, every glass surface glittering pleasantly in the morning sun. Today the receptionist is nothing but business; no questions; no attitude; no paperwork. Nothing at all beyond a cursory glance and clipped “good morning.” Unfortunately for her, the cold shoulder of a woman they hardly know doesn’t even register on their emotional Richter scale, with the magnitude of the forces pulling strings behind the surface in their lives these days.

Stark does not repeat his awe-inspiring performance in the lobby, Eddie left instead to follow a polite doorman to the same nondescript entranceway from yesterday, handing him a keycard on a lanyard and gesturing for them to swipe. The door opens with incredibly little fanfare. Silently, they step over the threshold into the belly of the beast’s den and stand there for a moment trying to catch their bearings.

The hallway is white, void of helpful signs or any distinguishing marking at all. The doorman stayed on the other side. Not for the first time, they bemoan their lack of foresight.

“Sir?” Eddie jumps out of his skin as he is loudly addressed by what sounds to be every surface at once; the sound emitting from the floor; the walls; the ceiling; sound waves crashing into one another and reverberating back. It had not been overly loud, but in their nervous state the surprise was jarring. ‘Jumping out of his skin’ is far more than metaphorical for them. It results in Venom materializing, at least partially. As one, they swivel in independent directions to try and ascertain the source of the voice, no point reabsorbing and attempting to hide if something is close enough to startle them like that, they’ve already seen Venom.

“Apologies, sir” comes at a much lower volume, and though the disembodied voice is just as bizarre, the shock factor is gone. “I did not mean to startle you, is this register acceptable?” They manage a strange two-headed nod, still unable to keep themselves from looking suspiciously along the vacant corridor. “I am JARVIS, an artificial intelligence residing in the Avengers facility. Mr. Stark has requested that you join him in the lab. Please follow the black line. If at any point you have a question, please let me know. Preface your request with JARVIS, and I will assist you to the upmost of my ability.”

During the introduction, a thin ink-black line appears in the seamless white floor, tracing off into the distance like a brushstroke over a blank canvas. Bemused, they follow it for a few steps, turning to watch as it slowly fades into nothingness behind them. Like Hansel and Gretel, following breadcrumbs into the forest, no sign of the path that leads them back to safety.

They manage an awkward “thank you,” staring partly at the wall, partly at the floor, unsure of where to direct their attention.

“You are welcome, sir.”

The halls are large and winding, all similar on this floor, just as they had been the day before. His path leads him into a blank white wall, which opens smoothly into an elevator, the floor automatically selecting itself when they step inside. To his initial surprise, the elevator begins taking them _down_ , and Eddie fights off a small spike of hysteria.

 **“What? You should be glad; at least it isn’t heights.”** Venom’s words are teasing but his usual joviality is missing. They both know full well that most of the trepidation comes from him; neither one of them remembers the underground facility in the LIFE foundation with any sort of fondness, but Venom had been trapped alone down there far longer than Eddie.

By the time they reach the lab, some semblance of familiarity has just begun to sink in; until they turn down what they are reasonably certain is the final corner to their destination, and instead of expansive windows looking into the hallway they find nothing but opaque wall.

“JARVIS?” They try, not sure how to frame their question. The black ink they had followed thus far disappears into the seam of floor and wall halfway down the hall, where Eddie estimates the door should be.

“Mr. Stark is currently…” in the brief moment of quiet when the AI pauses, Eddie hears muffled yelling from within the room. They spare a moment to be impressed by the soundproofing before JARVIS continues smoothly, the windows slowly shifting from opaque, to milky, to fogged glass, and finally crystal clear. “Mr. Stark is just concluding his call; you are welcome to join him at any time.”

The enormous holo-screen floating between them and Stark does Fury and his anger a fair amount of justice. Eddie can practically feel his ire through the photons. The doors slide open without a sound as they approach, the occupants’ parting shots echoing around the space. “Thanks, Fury, have a lovely day.”

“Stark you have no idea what you’re…”

“I know exactly what I’m getting into, thank you Matron. Brock made his choice; we’re both old enough to make our own mistakes.”

Livid does not begin to describe the look that transforms Fury’s face in the still fragment before Stark’s negligent flick of a wrist dissolves the call. Stark is all smiles and smug satisfaction when he turns to them, and only after he pauses for just a moment, mouth caught half open on a greeting, do they realize that Venom is still half-formed around their shoulders.

They barely have time to register their own mild embarrassment (of having lost their presence of mind enough to forget something so integral) before Stark smooths over his own surprise and rolls into his sales pitch for the day.

“Mornin’ handsome. Glad you gentlemen took me up on the offer. How are the dampeners? Is the wear uncomfortable anywhere?” He hops onto a stool, extending one hand palm up as he speaks, gesturing to their wrists with the other, and they hardly think about it before approaching and presenting their hands for inspection. Stark’s delight at the fact that they are wearing the tech is palpable. His fingers run over the joins, inspect the seamless fit, the skin directly beside the bands, for any sign of irritation. Smiles when he fails to find any. “Good.”

They’ve been holding their breath so far, and Eddie inhales slowly, intent on easing them into the strong cologne and hoping to avoid choking themselves in a coughing fit. A small intake reveals nothing overt. Their nostrils flare in surprise, breathing deep, searching for that scent but there is… nothing. Well, hardly _nothing_ , but the smell is just… Stark. The man himself, wearing the clinging aroma of soap, clean clothing, shampoo, the sharp mint of toothpaste lingering in his breath alongside the more recent acidic tang of coffee. When they manage to snap their attention back to the man himself, his face is adorned by a soft smile. Quiet pride. A good look on him, next to the boisterousness of the others.

“You didn’t seem too keen on the smell.” Is there any detail small enough to be beneath Stark’s notice? The tiny pinpricks of heat lighting their cheeks probably aren’t, if the smile’s growth is anything to go by. Eddie can see his pinked surprise reflected in one of the pale blue lenses, Venom’s head cocked slightly to the side in the other.

“ **It was strong**.” Venom manages, while Eddie flounders.

The small move to accommodate them takes Eddie off guard, but Venom is purely pleased. It’s almost enough to distract them from the director’s ire. Almost. They fall quiet, watching Stark root through his compiled instruments, their thoughts churning.

They have a thousand questions. Eddie asks the one they don’t really want the answer to. “Do they know?”

Stark kindly skips the pretense of pretending he doesn’t know exactly what they’re talking about. Keeps his eyes focused on the glass screens, their light obscuring his eyes behind the reflective lenses. “They are suspicious.” One corner of his mouth pulls up, seemingly of its own volition. “Me defending you this thoroughly made the question a lot easier for them; I may as well have left your information laying out in a manilla folder with ‘Stark’s secret, do not look’ stamped across it in bold letters.”

They take this in, and their silence pulls Stark’s focus, turning abruptly from the screens to face them down over the top of his glasses, one sculped eyebrow raised, waiting for their reaction. Beneath the boldness he looks… trepidatious. Worried. Almost like he’s expecting anger.

They take a moment to compose their thoughts. “It’s honestly surprising it took them this long. With all the footage you had of us before we even met… we were idiots to think anything we did was going to go unnoticed.”

“Yea well you _were_ pretty obvious.” He teases.

“ **Don’t rub it in**. Still, how could they not _know_?” Stark’s smile goes sheepish in a way they’re beginning to suspect means he’s hiding something. Some of the dots are beginning to slot together. The sharp focus of their eyes boring into his must be the final straw, and Stark buckles.

“Well, SHIELD isn’t half bad at what they do, most of the time. Information gathering is a huge part of their routine, but in your case, _someone_ was going to some pretty extraordinary lengths to obfuscate the situation.”

The lightbulb finally illuminates. “You were hiding us. _Shielding_ us from SHIELD.” They smirk at the stupidity of their own joke but Stark just beams, a touch of pink tinging his cheekbones.

“Don’t look so thankful. The mysterious lack of information surrounding the rocket fiasco and fall of the LIFE foundation was glaringly suspicious; I bought you some time, but I also painted a neon target on your back the moment I got involved.”

“They would have found us eventually.” Knowing what they do now, they’re certain of it. Had Stark not been around… they shudder to think about the path their lives would currently be taking. Then their thoughts turn to something else, something even _more_ sinister. A shiver trips its way down their spine, Venom sending a soothing ripple to follow it. “If they’re so great with surveillance, why didn’t they know about the disappearances?”

“That,” Stark says, meeting their eyes with a dramatic pause, all levity gone from his expression “is exactly what I’d like to know.”

***

For all the mad scientist vibes the man gives off, he is surprisingly efficient in practice. Stark’s movements are fastidious, the manner in which he touches them clinical. JARVIS is a constant fixture in their interactions; interjecting data points; monitoring vitals at Stark’s behest; recording visuals; prepping tests; you name it. Along with the AI come a handful of robots; their clumsy helpfulness combined with their master’s gracefully intent movements blending into a bizarre ballet, playing itself out all around them.

The first day Stark and Eddie coax Venom into allowing a blood sample; their first glimpse at how deeply their symbiosis truly runs. Turns out, Eddie’s metabolism and Venom’s are linked on a cellular level; the same blood feeds them, whisks away their toxins, oxygenates their human cells and provides nitrogen rich platelets to symbiotic flesh.

Stark’s fascination with them has been evident since the first moment they landed in his clutches, but it turns out he’s been tempering himself somewhat; upon the first piece of genuine discovery, it’s like all the switches slam on. Stark goes full-blown geek and they don’t know what hit them.

Venom influences Eddie’s bone structure, brain chemistry, the speed at which his neurons fire and the nerves conduct signals throughout their body. In layman’s terms (Stark’s words) Venom has the cheat codes to Eddie’s system. He can pump up their adrenaline, dopamine, you name it. Boost their metabolism, dictate the hierarchy of what body parts receive energy, script muscle growth. Eddie is dumbfounded. Surprisingly (or not, depending on how well you know him) so is Venom.

 **“I do not do any of that.”** He growls, almost defensive.

Stark isn’t surprised by the sudden appearance of Venom’s head near his shoulder, stretching across the counter to read the results. Nor by the statement itself. He just keeps typing, spares barely a glance in Venom’s direction as he talks.

“It’s not surprising that you say that. I wouldn’t expect you to be doing any of it on purpose, any more than Eddie told his skin to heal or heart to beat before you came along. We get on with the basics of survival on autopilot, completely subconscious, everything a subroutine requiring little to no attention. It just happens automatically. You evolved to be symbiotic, it makes sense that a decent portion of your subroutines are geared towards control of your host’s functions, otherwise you wouldn’t survive.”

Stark completes his notes, sends DUM-E off to grab something and turns around to face them both where they are sitting on the countertop. “Think about it; a human body’s natural defenses would treat you like an invader, send its immune system to combat you and, even when it failed, the extra burden would drain your host’s stamina and make them sick. So, you override those systems, convince the host that you’re a part of it. After that, you must receive nutrients. You still have a unique genetic makeup; your cells are composed differently from a human’s and use slightly altered patterns of energy generation. Your blood carries more than oxygen to your system. It had to learn that behavior from somewhere.”

He catches sight of their mirrored expressions (lost) and reigns himself in with a visible effort, scrubbing a hand roughly over the stubble on his face. Blows out a long breath. “Anyway. Point is you do it without thinking. Come on, let’s go before DUM-E finds something to light on fire, you can’t trust that bot to be alone for more than five minutes. I want to test out those sonic dampeners.” The gentle tug of a hand at their wrist is becoming almost familiar as Stark drags them from the room in the wake of his endless words. “I need to know how to improve them; you need to know how well they work and against what before you go trusting them in a fight.”

***

Some would say that the Avengers’ reactions to Eddie are reasonable. Eddie himself would be counted amongst their number if it weren’t for the fact that they had to personally _endure_ it.

On the upside, their interactions with the rest of the team have been minimal to date. Outside of the conference room, their ‘hero sightings’ boil down to a handful of awkward moments passing one another in the hallway and that one time Dr. Banner had been in Stark’s lab when Eddie’s “appointment” started: the last being the worst by a veritable landslide.

Never before had Eddie’s presence caused someone to go green quite so _literally_.

It wasn’t that Banner hadn’t been pleased to see them, quite the opposite: it was obvious from the screens and tablet feeds populating the room that they had been discussing the results of Tony’s work with Venom. They had even consented to Bruce’s involvement, as he was a leader in the field of biological research and development. Dr. Banner was in the best position to utilize the information Venom could provide.

As such, the men’s expectant expressions are near mirror images of one another; until the glass doors slide open. Then Bruce’s nostrils flare, his lips, open in what started as a smile and no doubt pleasant greeting, sour into a grimace. His friendly wave is aborted in favor of clutching at his temples, and Eddie feels himself go rigid.

The trace of green tinging the veins of Banner’s neck and arms are as vivid as neon signs to their enhanced vision.

Two sets of eyes lock hotly across the clandestine white space. All awareness of the outside world fades as the animal in them focuses on a fellow apex predator. Beyond a _threat_ ; this beast is more than a capable challenge should the Doctor unleash him. Venom employs their best basilisk’s stare, barely breathing through the intense tension of their flexed muscles, every atom of them coiled tight as a compressed spring, simmering beneath their skin. Bruce’s eyes are ringed with the same fluorescence as his veins, poisonously bright, his pinpoint pupils jumping erratically from Eddie’s face, to the hands resting flexed at their sides, to the door behind them and back again, lightning fast.

A sharp crack resounds around the room, nearly giving Eddie the long-overdue heart attack he’s been expecting from the start of this adventure, and Bruce’s eyes finally shift targets to the shattered countertop beneath his green-knuckled grip. When he looks back up, the color is still clinging to him around the edges, adding a sickly shade to his countenance, but the mania is gone from his eyes. The beast’s awareness is still there, simmering hotly in the back of his gaze, but the analytical part of his brain is firmly back in the driver’s seat.

With the spell broken, the both of them seem to register Tony at the same time; Bruce wincing in what looks like the pain of a headache as he turns to the other man, Eddie’s already over sensitized system sending an additional pump of adrenaline singing through his veins. Stark motions with his free hand, the other arm wrapping around Banner’s shaking shoulders.

At his behest, Eddie moves to the furthest corner of the lab. Prowls is probably a better description, moving in an awkward side-step to keep Bruce in their line of sight. Backing themselves into a corner is the last thing they want to do in this moment, and they’ll be damned if they are turning their back on that giant ball of unstable energy. Bruce is shaking, still steeling glances in their direction, but he lets Tony grip his arms; allows himself to be led from the room without further incident.

Alone in the quiet, they slowly let go of their combined tension and Eddie sighs, slumping back onto the nearest clear bit of countertop. Venom is out along his arm in the next instant, hovering before him when he finishes scrubbing a hand over his face, trying to dispel the last of the adrenaline-induced jitters.

By comparison, the stilted small talk about the weather in the elevator with Steve Rogers had been a walk in the park on a pleasant afternoon.

Witnessing a tall blond behemoth of a man amble his way drunkenly through one of the corridors in nothing but a pair of boxers, shifting a pot of coffee from one hand to the other in a vain attempt to prevent either from being burnt (the pot’s handle had been absent) was nothing to bat an eye at.

Sharing a silent hallway with an even quieter Black Widow still ranked in at a close second; she had turned on every last instinctive alarm bell they had between them for different reasons. Widow couldn’t physically tear them limb from limb, but everything she lacked in superhuman strength her quiet competence made up for in _spades_. She embodies the type of violence you never see coming.

After a quarter hour or so, Stark comes back in. He looks worn around the edges, but the tired smile they share is genuine.

“Sorry about that, should have seen it coming probably, or at least thought about it, but I have a hard time remembering sometimes.”

“Remembering?” They query.

“How thin the line can be. Bruce is always so damn put together; I swear it takes years off his life.” He looks up sheepishly from the tablet he is already back to scanning. “It’s easy for me to forget, how dangerous you all can be.” Eddie can feel his eyebrows hitting his hairline.

“You forget.” They deadpan together. Venom’s baritone is edging close to the tone he reserves for Eddie’s dumber moments.

“Yes.”

Eddie can’t quite remember whether Venom’s been rendered speechless before this moment. He’s leaning towards _no_. Fortunately, his version of jaw-dropped-in-awed-surprise-that-isn’t-sure-whether-or-not-to-be-offended is terrifying enough to make up for how comical Eddie’s own face must look right now.

“What?” The tablet’s dangling from his fingers now, forgotten in the face of their incredulity, a crease marring the plane of his forehead. “Is letting my guard down somehow offensive?”

 _No_ , they think. It’s more of a miracle. Or an incredible lack of survival instinct.

Stark’s smile is still fixed firmly in place, but the worry is slowly soaking into his eyes. Eddie wonders how this man fools so damn many people into thinking he has a devil-may-care attitude when his concern for others is so vividly apparent. Maybe staying willfully ignorant of it makes them feel better about the extent to which they hound him in the media. Eddie sure as hell knows he’s been guilty of dehumanizing people just so he can sleep at night.

They shake themselves of their surprise, their concern for Stark’s peace of mind apparently enough to overcome their flabbergast; Venom extends himself to look over Stark’s shoulder at the tablet’s readout as Eddie pushes away from the countertop to stand beside him, asking about the lab results and providing all the right ‘ooh’s’ and ‘ah’s’ to get Stark rambling happily about his work, the incident firmly behind them.

***

Weeks in, somewhere between the endurance tests and the EKG, Eddie has to admit that he is getting morbidly behind on his workload: the unreviewed files his assistant sent him have taken over the entire desk in his room, and the stack is becoming precarious. There are wide gaps in between the tests and waiting for results, down time while Stark processes and plots and plans new test regimes, programs an algorithm to account for this or correct for that.

The problem is, Eddie can’t stop himself from simply enjoying the time for what it is: a chance to observe Tony Stark. To see the man he is behind the thick veneer of public image and societal expectation.

Their conversations have rambled everywhere from videogames, to alien landscapes, to debates about different pizza recipes, combinations, styles, which are the best and worst of the country at large (heated, and markedly three-way, Tony in favor of New York style, Eddie more of a thick-cruster, and Venom vehement about a lack of mushrooms). They have waxed philosophical, talked like old men about the new age kids and how they take technology (most of which the man before him is responsible for creating) for granted, and chattered like children over shared bits of nostalgia.

Even when he’s speaking a language completely foreign to either of them, Venom and Eddie can’t help but sit in rapt attention.

Unfortunately, the nastygrams in his inbox are starting to make him feel bad; so, they suck up their childish desire to be Stark’s center of attention and drag a thick manuscript into the lab with them.

Stark takes it in stride. Still chatters on, to JARVIS, DUM-E, himself, to them, the target audience appears to be inconsequential. Eddie is pleasantly surprised to discover that the background noise has no negative impact on his attention to the job; he can keep himself on task and Stark watch between chapters.

The third day they show up lugging a fat stack of type beneath their arm Stark suggests a change of scenery. Or rather, “working while working, can’t say I’m not a fan; I’ve actually been letting a project fester. This is going to take a while to process, so I’m going to go throw a wrench at it, see if I can make some progress. Care to join?” The offer takes them back for a moment.

Sure, they enjoy stark’s company, his easy acceptance (moving freely has become second nature around Stark, Venom slipping into sight while Stark’s masks fall, just past the doorway into his secure spaces), and while it certainly seems like Stark enjoys theirs as well, well… No one had ever gone around accusing either of them of having high self-esteem. It was easy to explain away his interest and friendliness as professionalism, a means to an end.

Proof of a genuine desire to have them around when it isn’t strictly necessary is…nice.

The workshop is every bit as cluttered as the lab. Perhaps even more so. There are torn down pieces of things completely unrecognizable to them. Bits of armor, easily assumed by their shape, the gleam of sleek red and gold. Eddie spots the bike torn apart in the corner and nearly drops his manuscript. Stark notices, chuckling, tossing his jacket over the back of a worn swivel stool and gesturing to the room at large. “Sit anywhere, look at anything, touch nothing that looks deadly or poisonous or electrified or flammable; it probably is. Especially him.” He finishes, pointing at a sad looking bot in the corner, who whirrs quietly at the implication. “Don’t give me that, you want me to be nice, go a day without dropping something expensive.”

They end up curled on top of what appears to be a bean bag. At first they choose it out of its sheer randomness, existing in a place like this, but now… Eddie is sinking deep into the welcoming squish of what feels like a memory foam bean bag chair the size of a luxury lazy boy and twice as relaxing to be cradled by. He’s halfway through the manuscript and dazedly listening to the background soundtrack of Stark’s endless word stream, the clinks and clangs of metal on metal as he works, the high-pitched whirring of mechanisms as the robot by his side articulates.

Venom slides down their arm and grabs the pen before it can fall from Eddie’s limp fingers. He discovered early on that moving their physical body would bring Eddie out of his sleep with a quickness, and between the testing during the day, hunts at night, and late hours spent catching up on editing, there aren’t enough hours in a day where their body is resting. Carefully distributing his shifting weight, Venom slides down over the manuscript, flips to a blank page and lets the pen loop in a graceful arc over the paper.

Written word is new for him; their previous host world had only a rudimentary language, what would be considered primitive cuneiform on earth, but what they lacked in speech they more than made up for in imagery. Art had been everywhere, proliferated in each facet and sect of their society. It died out when their kind came, pragmatic and hell bent on survival, leaving little room for anything as frivolous and individualistic as _art_.

Venom, however, had _loved_ it; though he’d never let his rudimentary works see the light of day. Allowing a host to keep its autonomy was bad enough; had he ever once been caught picking up one of their habits, he would have been absorbed into another symbiont long ago.

By the time the relative quiet registers, the blank page is nearly full of tight, interlocking lines; the forms suggested by them indecipherable, meaningless, indescribable but compelling.

When he glances away from the paper, it is to find Stark watching them intently, paused in his work; a torch sputters quietly, lying forgotten at his side. Wordlessly, he sloughs off the thick gloves, goes to rummage through a drawer. Slams it. Selects another one to subject to his brutal inspection. On the third, he seems to find what he is looking for: a flat piece of black glass and a slim pen.

Wordlessly, perhaps to avoid waking Eddie, Stark sinks to the floor before them, taps the glass, tilts it in their direction and goes into an application. Venom watches as the surface glows, goes bright, and finally presents a white screen surrounded by tiny pictures, selectable icons, and stark holds the pen and tablet out to him expectantly. Blinking, he reaches out a clawed hand to take the tablet, wraps a tendril around the pen and settles it against their knee, investigates the icons, makes a few experimental loops.

“It’s different from pen and paper at first, took me a while to get the hang of it, especially for clean lines. But you never run out of paper, and once you get the hang of it, the possibilities are endless.” Stark whispers, smiles at them, stands to redon his gloves and pick up the spitting torch.

He loses track of how long they spend like this: half sleeping, half drawing, minds equally adrift with Stark pleasantly present in the background.

***

Eddie still isn’t comfortable with the way Stark seems to treat money. Or his guests. He’s already provided them with a home and company, and no amount of cajoling is going to convince him to let man buy his food too.

Besides, Mrs. Chang would probably go out of business if not for her one stubbornly loyal and bottomless customer.

Carrying groceries into the building is starting to gain an air of normalcy, right about the time an alarm blares harshly from every surface in the elevator cab. The dampeners block their biological reaction seamlessly, but they still jump, Venom enfolding their shoulders and pressing out to hold against the four walls for stability.

JARVIS doesn’t let them suffer long, informs them in his chipper, business-like way that there is an emergency in the city, the Avengers are responding, and Stark requests their presence in the conference room. The offer to send a bot along for his abandoned groceries is also appreciated; JARVIS must catch the mournful look they shoot the foodstuffs as they set them against the hallway wall.

The long and short of the situation ruining their quiet-dinner-alone-with-ourselves plans boils down to a group of brats running amuck in town with what appear to be weaponized leaf-blowers. The amount of damage said teenagers are inflicting with the clearly-more-than-lawncare-equipment is staggering: a city block is swiftly turning to rubble before their very drone feeds. Perhaps five minutes pass in total between the warning order they received in the elevator and the moment their bewildered feet touch the corrugated floor of the Quinjet, where they struggle vainly with the seat straps until Widow saunters by, smoothly shoulder checks them into the back of the chair and straps them in (way too) tight without missing more than a step on her way to the cockpit.

Hawkeye’s snickering from across the cab is neither quiet nor discrete.

The look Thor shoots them is surprisingly sympathetic.

They are airborne before the myriad of events packed into those five minutes start to penetrate their startled, overloaded brain.

Tony Stark is a magician of the modern era, and no one comes close to matching his level expertise in the arenas of stage presence and the use of understatement for effect.

They had arrived on the scene just as a brief explanation started off with a vivid background of billowing dust and detritus. No sooner had they crossed the threshold than Stark smoothly segued into what they assumed would be a bombshell; Eddie Brock is the host of an alien simbiote; they are known as Venom; they will be accompanying us as code ‘Black’, Bruce I’m leaving it up to you to explain what that means.

Reactions (aside from their own mild arrhythmic cardiac incident) had been minimal. The sole reason they were not, in fact, null, was Thor; who managed to look both mystified and enlightened at once. It turns out the mystification came from a lack of familiarity with the terminology, not surprise in response to the alien species taking refuge beneath Eddie’s skin.

They observe the Avengers, gazing around the cabin from one face to another as the team checks equipment, calmly hold each other’s gaze, smile faintly at the running banter from the cockpit, grins promising violence to their enemies; clearly, everything that passes for normal in their pre-mission world. The presence of an alien/human hybrid in their midst does not even seem to register as anything out of the norm.

What even _are_ these people?

***

It’s bedlam.

The Quinjet lights upon the top of a sturdy-looking building, only to have the brick and mortal crumble right out from underneath it. Fortunately, Natasha has a quick and steady hand at the controls, puts them down some space away (despite Hawkeye’s vociferous groaning about the distance) and punches something into the display before unbuckling and heading out with the team.

They watch them go, feeling awkward and useless, terribly unsure of themselves and the reason for their presence here. Once the jet’s living cargo is down to two (bodies, at least) the ramp jumps back up and they rise in near silence to what he assumes is a predetermined “safe distance.”

The silence is oppressive; the muffled rumbles and accompanying plumes of dust cloud and smoke marring the otherwise beautiful sky only making it worse.

Eddie doesn’t realize they’re straining against the harness, trying to get a better view, until it snaps. They freeze stock still as the heavy buckle drops to the grated floor with a sharp clatter. The silence has gained a quality of intensity previously absent, one they’re pretty sure means Bruce (and consequently the Hulk) are now focusing on them. Which is approximately the time their brains catch up to the fact that the last time they’d been _near_ Bruce it had taken everything the man had to hold himself together long enough for Tony to escort him from the room.

Now they’re alone with him.

In a very _small_ , enclosed space.

 _Very_ high up in the air.

In a vehicle full of flammable things. Like fuel. And ordnance. And Stark-knows what else.

Fresh panic combines with the worry they were trying to suppress over the Avengers running around below them, facing down violent teenage jackasses with ridiculously advanced weaponry, and the resulting wave of anxiety nearly sends them into a full-blown attack.

Venom flexes in his chest. They breathe. Slowly, their heartrate descends back to something approaching normal for them (still fast enough to kill your average human) and look up slowly to meet a pair of surprisingly warm, compassionate eyes, and feel shocked all over again.

“It’s alright, I can’t tell you how many of those I’ve broken.” Bruce chuckles. There are tight lines creasing the corners of his eyes. Those and the white stain of his knuckles, betraying the strength of his grip on the armrests, the only outward sign that he is under any strain. He nods towards the monitors, easing one vice grip to release his own buckle, and heads towards the control bank. Eddie stands, intrigued by this new and unexpected attitude; wanders over to stand behind, staying as far out of the man’s space as the cramped fixtures allow.

“I can’t stand to watch the feed, it stresses me out, but we can put it on without sound if you want. Might make you feel better.” He murmurs companionably, reaching for the palm scanner. “Might make it worse.” He warns, then he’s addressing JARVIS and a large screen flickers to life.

“Thank you” they manage, already absorbed by the gripping scene before them: the Avengers flitting around the battlespace like they were born to it, coordinating somehow within the chaos, an accidental carnage-strewn ballet. It was both torturous to watch and impossible to look away from.

“No problem,” and there’s a hint of dry humor in the quiet response, something that sounds almost like a smile as Bruce walks back to his seat near the ramp. Eddie doesn’t miss how the man chooses the farthest possible seat from where they are standing, before relaxing a tiny fraction.

“Don’t hulk out” they call back to him before thinking better of it, instantly kicking themselves for their lack of tact, halfway through an involuntary cringe before Bruce lets out a soft, surprised chuckle. Despite their rapt focus on the footage, that laugh catches their attention; glance back to find Bruce smiling at them, no sign of offense anywhere in his features.

“Don’t worry, I know this particular song and dance pretty well. I won’t go green unless they call me.” And then it dawns on them.

“Code green.”

“Yup.” The spark of a kindred spirit is one of the last things they thought they would _ever_ see lurking in Bruce’s eyes and yet… there it is. Tiny but unmistakable.

How many hours has he spent sitting alone in the Quinjet waiting for a call? How bad did it have to get before the call was made? Right now, they were watching what seemed like half the city disappear before their eyes. What if the Avengers made the call too late, if he could have made a difference? What if the call never comes but one of them comes back damaged, broken, worse? How could he ever reconcile that?

“Code black” they infer, indicating themselves.

“Yup,” he pops the “p,” an affection they’d bet handsomely came from his long association with Stark, and gives them a final sardonic smile before pulling on a pair of noise canceling headphones, leaning his head back against the chair and preparing to wait it out.

They take a moment to look the man over with a newfound respect, awed at the apparent calm exuding from his relaxed stance. Slightly cowed, they turn their attention firmly back to the monitor. Difficult or no, Bruce has endured this silent vigil countless times before. Surely, they can make it through just _one_. They’re pretty sure it’s just the first of many more to come.

***

When the dust finally settles over the New York dawn, it is to a significantly altered skyline in the local neighborhood, but somehow the buildings have been the only significant casualties. Venom and Eddie feel firmly that this is a job extraordinarily well done (the Avengers hadn’t even harmed the offenders all that much, all four of them are alive and thrashing in the jet behind them), but the attitude of the team seems to expect otherwise from SHIELD.

What seemed like hours into the scuffle, the comms had lit up about civilians trapped in the wreckage and no one had hands to spare to get them out. Shockingly, Stark hadn’t been the one to call upon them. It had been Captain Rogers who, sharp and businesslike after the briefest pause, ordered them down from the ship to evacuate the civilians trapped by the rubble.

“You are not to engage unless directly threatened. You hear me, Brock? Only the civilians. Leave the assailants to us.” Or, ‘go help the innocent people whom I am pretty sure you won’t eat.’

“Venom.” They growled over the intercom Bruce roused for them as soon as Rogers had spoken.

“Excuse me?”

 **“We are Venom.”** They corrected again, their shape growing larger, stronger, surer, as they approached the ramp opening for them, and then Eddie did his damnedest to ignore the vertigo and sense of plummeting doom until they were on the ground, Venom laughing at him as he always did, already running towards the closest pile of rubble to hunt for signs of life.

A scant few minutes into the jet ride afterwards, Eddie had been riding the high of a job well done, deeper acceptance from the Avengers than they ever dreamed possible, and a good bit of unreasonable giddiness from the proud smirk Stark had shot them. Then the console connected a call, terse words shot through the cabin at speed, reverberating off the smooth surfaces and shredding their good mood and elation to a bloody paste.

Neither the hooligans, the crumbling brick and mortar, nor the rabid reporters and paparazzi popping out of thin air towards the end of the excursion seemed threatening at all compared to what Stark was asking of them now. In the deluge of media streaming video of the “newest Avenger” there was little they could do to avoid it. “A debrief,” he’d said. At _SHIELD_.

Despite Stark’s multiple promises and vows to protect them, the sonic dampeners combined with Iron Man’s still-armored presence next to them are barely enough to get them to walk through the doors.

Tony leads the way into the entrance of SHIELD, the team (plus Venom) hot on his heels, and then one of their least favorite voices thunders through the antechamber, thick with reproach. They look up, resentfully, into the sour face of Nicholas Fury.

“Stark, you and your freaky, mind-reading pet alien _par-_ ”

“Symbiote” Tony neatly cuts the man off before they can even get properly upset over anything but the tone, and no one misses the guttural rumble that had echoed out of Bruce at Fury’s sue of the word “pet.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

“Freaky, yes. Alien? Half, absolutely. Mind reader, not so much. Parasite is a misnomer to the point of being moronic, and while most of the time I am more than happy to let you all amble about being idiots, it’s just a step too far for me today. Symbiotic relationships in nature. Learn how to use google.”

They can clearly make out the veins jumping in Fury’s temples from here. A clipped and properly furious “ _fine_ ” snaps out. “Your freaky alien _symbiote_ cannot be in here. Unless you’re looking to have it exterminated.” Fury sounds hopeful at the prospect.

“They stay or we leave, your choice boss.”

No one, not Fury or Stark or Captain Rogers, not the SHIELD agents swarming them, and _certainly_ not Eddie or Venom, expected the clipped sentence. It had come from Barton, spit harshly from his stance on the threshold.

They watch in shock as Natasha steps up behind him, very pointedly not crossing into the building. Fury is watching the pair of like he’s weighing his options, considering cutting his losses. They wonder idly if he’s seen somebody for the blood pressure pulsing in his too-visible veins.

***

One evening Tony ambles into the lab while they are struggling with a sketch and bit of editorial work (Venom is spread over Eddie’s lap where he has sprawled into an engulfing blob chair, a sheaf of papers making up the latest manuscript submission bearing the brunt of his red pen with stoic tenacity as Venom hovers over the sleek Stark pad on the floor, his ever-shifting form casting incongruous shadows on the ceiling).

The characteristic greeting they have come to expect is absent, as is any form of acknowledgment beyond the fixation of Stark’s gaze, seemingly transfixed by the Rorschach taking shape above their heads. He doesn’t look down, instead bussies himself with his cufflinks and snatches the a jacket from the back of a nearby chair (Eddie has it on good authority, his own, that the jacket in question has not moved nor been laundered for nearly a month but with the efficiency of the cleaning systems JARVIS maintains it isn’t worth mentioning).

“Hungry?” he asks no one in particular, though they are the only possible target in earshot who subsists on food.

 **“Always”** comes out in their uniquely strange harmony.

“Pizza?” and venom is smiling with his too many teeth. **“We could do pizza.”** A moment passes, and Tony pauses in the process of sweeping back out the doorway, aiming a pointed look over his shoulder. “Well? Let’s go.” And he starts down the hall. Eddie frowns, having assumed they were going to order in as they normally would, but they put their work aside in a haphazard stack and snatch up their hoodie, padding hurriedly through the corridors in Stark’s wake.

In the elevator their host’s distraction continues, the phone in his hand seeming to vibrate without end as his fingers blur across the screen, and they let their attention wander over Tony’s features in the neon brightness of the small metal box.

Despite the supposedly accidental combination, the jacket matches his pressed slacks remarkably well, the lines easily suggesting the best path for Eddies eyes to travel as they flow down his form, appreciate the way the man looks so perfect nearly all of the time, how he makes it seems almost accidental.

Finally, their gaze lands on the polished surface of his shoes and in the same view their worn chuck Tayler’s provide quite the contrast. Their whole ensemble comes quite close to being Tony’s mirror opposite in every way.

His jeans are worn nearly through and exceptionally comfortable. His shirt was chosen because it was at the top of the stack, not for any purpose of appearance. His hoodie is a size too large, more than just a comfort these days. As the elevator dings and they step into the parking garage, his hood comes up to shield them from waiting eyes as Venom creeps back to tuck himself into the join of Eddie’s neck and shoulder. The extra space allows them both a little more leeway for the increasing inhumanity of their movements.

The car ride is quiet but companionable, Venom staring out at the night life passing them by which he feels so disconnected from, though objectively it had been such a short time since Eddie himself was a part of it.

It is getting harder to take Eddie by surprise these days: months under Stark’s roof with the most bizarre individuals the earth has yet produced inuring them to what was left of his shock factor after cohabitating a body with a flesh-eating alien.

Somehow Stark still manages it on a semi-periodic basis.

The back alley they pull into gives him pause and though they don’t know what they had been expecting, it is not to be ushered into the back kitchen of a mom and pop pizza parlor.

The pizza kitchen they currently occupy a small table in the corner of is bustling with late night activity, as the wait staff burst in and out through constantly swinging doors, and cooks harass each other in brash Italian and broken English. The tile is pristine beneath their feet despite the heavy traffic, dishwashers working double time to restock the shelves as order after order disappears and is returned demolished.

Of all the voracious customers likely packing the dining room outside, none are likely to hold a candle to them. Already two pies have been summarily obliterated since they sat down. Between Tony, Eddie, and Venom, they make quite the team.

The first pizza had arrived steaming hot and the old woman delivering it leaned right into Eddie’s space to place it on the table, a carrier bearing cheese and peppers following shortly after. No one pays them any mind as Tony folds his sunglasses into a front pocket and tucks into a stringy slice. Mystified, they pull their own piece from the gooey mess and instantly Venom is rumbling in their chest with fondness for this “pizza parlor.”

The food is amazing, the staff polite, and Eddie smiles from beneath the shadows of his hood. The pizza is _good_ , the noises they are making only barely human and deeply embarrassing but Stark obviously does not care, so they try not to either.

The elderly woman who’d met them at the curb keeps brushing close by them, void of the usual anxiety that keeps people distant on instinct, ruffling their hood at one point when she places down the second pie. Somewhere into it, they come down from their feeding frenzy enough to notice Stark staring at them, not that it takes a large amount of effort to pick up on. The man is not hiding it in the slightest. Eddie has been sneaking slices to the deep shadow near his neck, venom taking careful (for him) bites and murmuring appreciatively. Tony Starks’s full regard can sometimes be unnerving (so much going on within the titan of a mind behind the goatee and easy grin) but tonight, he just smiles a little wider each time a piece of pizza disappears into the shadow of their hood.

Unnerved at once by their own indiscretion, Eddie goes to put the piece back down, only for Tony to lean forward and shake his head, clearly picking up on and trying to banish their concern. He gestures for them to drop the hood and all four of their eyes stare at him as though he’s finally lost his mind for good. The unimpressed stare they receive in return is unexpected, as is the visceral response they feel to his murmured “trust me.”

Like it is just that simple. They pause in a way that must be somewhat comical given the airborne pizza and Eddie’s incredulous stare but Stark just widens his grin, says “trust me,” again, like it’s nothing, and in the breathless moment that follows they realize with a jolt that… they do.

They reach up with a (hate to admit it) shaking hand and slide down the hood. Venom’s head arranges itself on his shoulder as they often do within the tower and to their utter disbelief, no one does more than give them a cursory once-over, obviously surprised and curious but also numbed, apparently by their association with Tony Stark dining here. Just who has he been bringing as a dinner guest?!

Slowly, they recover their shock and venom takes another bite from Eddie, getting completely distracted by the smell of a meat lover’s pizza the elderly Italian woman is ushering past their table. She bumps into his ‘nose’ and they go rigid as stone, mouth open on a shocked apology even as the woman turns and coos, apologizing first for bumping them and then inquiring after venom’s interest in the pie, addressing the floating head without pause.

“Do you want to try it? Don’t you worry dear, I’ll bring one by” and she pats. Venom’s. Head. Like a grandmother bestowing affection on a small child. The shock is indescribable. No one (except for Stark) has ever touched them on purpose before; not even once. On instinct, most people give them a wide berth, even when they look completely human; their animal brain keeping them far away. They only realize they have frozen (mouths agape) when a hot slice of pepperoni falls from the piece of pie Eddie has poised hear his mouth, and plops unceremoniously onto his leg.

It’s the first time they’ve heard Tony laugh like that, completely open and without a trace of self-restraint.

It is beautiful, banishing the fog of stress and worry clouding over him since he’d entered the lab.

***

The suit is uncomfortably comfortable. The lines it cuts are beyond designer, the kind of look you buy a magazine for, because the man on the cover is so otherworldly you just can’t help but keep looking. By all accounts this level of chic should come with an implied degree of abject discomfort. Eddie had not known there was a level beyond ‘rich’ that included looking absurdly remarkable _and_ feeling like you were wearing fancy pajamas.

Several times tonight Venom has had to actively distract them before Eddie can fall into a tailspin attempting to estimate what kind of money went into his outfit and end up having conniptions.

The invitation alone had been surprise enough, Stark coming out of left field in the middle of an editing project and dropping lines about a charity dinner the company insisted he attend and how _dull_ they always were alone, but he didn’t have anyone to go with. Which is _absurd_ , because Tony Stark can go to anything with anyone he wants: there are precious few people who would turn down going to a _landfill_ if it meant spending time with him.

But it is painfully obvious that Tony Stark does not want to go to the dinner with _anyone_. What Tony Stark _wants_ is for them to offhandedly offer to go and keep him company, as if he truly could not find anyone. In retrospect, it is easy to see that he played them like a fiddle, but even if they had seen through him at the time, they would have danced to his tune regardless. Because awkwardly supple suit and uncomfortably abrasive socialites or no, they firmly belong to the group of people who want to be around Tony Stark. And Tony Stark is at a gala. So here they are.

All in all, the soiree is a quiet affair, the fund raiser barely more than a thin excuse to get the rich and well-connected together to forge even better connections than they already have. So far their experience of the evening has included a fancy limo ride the likes of which they are becoming disconcertingly accustomed to, and wandering the richly appointed penthouse space of a tall building, pecking at small hors de ’oeuvres that look fantastic and turned out to be less than appetizing for their sensitive palate. Tony, for his part, had been swept up into a group of hungry upperclassmen the moment the elevator doors whispered open.

The smells are a riot in this place, so many perfumes, colognes, fancy cocktails and olfactory dishes that their sense of smell had been pretty much blanked out by this point, and between that and the incessant chatter around them, the clatter of cutlery and champagne flutes on metal trays, high heels and polished shoes tap-tap-tapping across the floor, the muted music in the corner a background cacophony all its own…

Suffice to say they have been zoning in on small details throughout the evening in an effort to block the rest out into a dull roar. At any rate, they are going to blame the overload and subsequent hyper-focus for allowing a devilishly tall blonde to get the drop on them.

“Eddie” calls an insidious voice, dripping with false saccharine sweetness, from directly behind them.

The tight jump of muscle in their shoulders is probably visible. Damn. On the bright side, the sharp tinkling of spider fractures creeping along the glass in their hands probably isn’t audible to anyone else in the room, and they exchange it for one on the nearest passing tray before turning to face the demoness, armed with Eddie’s best shit-eating grin.

Valerie is no less effervescent and sinister today than she was on the other side of Eddie’s microphone, back when her husband’s oil refinery had blown itself sky-high under the pressure of too-much oil and too-little OSHA compliance. The unholy fire lighting the pits in her doll-black eyes, however, has only grown hotter with time. The small man at her shoulder is not the aforementioned-husband, and he wonders how long it had taken her to ditch the man, wipe herself clean of the fiasco, and find something new to suck the life out of. This dolt looks far too stupid to be aware or even properly afraid, and Eddie can’t quite decide whether or not to pity him.

“I had no idea you’d taken to such a ... _lucrative_ line of work.” She sneers, and though her expression clearly denotes it as an insult, he has no idea how or where it was intended to land. Editing may not pay top dollar, but if anything, it should rank slightly higher than _reporter_ in their eyes. At the least it should paint him as slightly less threatening to their ilk.

“Pardon?” He prompts, not bothering to mask their unadulterated bafflement. She smirks a little wider, just this side of breaking past her genteel appearances and simply baring her teeth.

“Oh, come now Eddie,” she croons, and the dolt hanging onto her arm twists his face into something smarmy, Valerie’s features favoring him with a look that has his skin crawling; it’s lust and objectification distilled into an expression, with a side order of belittlement for good measure. “You don’t have to feel bad, plenty of _reputable_ escorts attend these sorts of things. I’m sure you’re making out quite well for yourself. That suit for one thing, marvelous. Looks plenty spacious around the _knees_.”

Comprehension is slow to dawn, but with it comes the unmistakable bloodlust that tells Eddie they are both on the same level of understanding. The insult registers in two ways, and Eddie is surprised to find they’re more offended on behalf of Stark than for themselves. Fortunately, going zero to scathing in seconds flat is one of his few remarkable talents. “I’m sorry, but do you honestly think that Tony fucking _Stark_ needs to pay anybody to spend time with him? I mean being within a mile of the guy is enough of a publicity high to keep even creeps like you going for weeks before you need another hit.”

She draws back her lip, giving him physical confirmation that the words are having an effect, a drop of blood in the water. It proves that Eddie Brock’s famous brand of zero-fucks-given communication is just as jarring now to these upper crust socialites as it always has been, and she genuinely should have known better after last time. They don’t know how to handle it when someone treats them honestly, blatant words to be taken at face value instead of velvet daggers all attempting to hide the sting of the blade, unnoticed until it slides in for the kill.

When Eddie Brock comes to end you, you sure as fuck get to see it coming.

“And you think that _Eddie Brock_ , who is infamous for stirring shit, ignoring bribes, shirking threats from upper crust dough-puffs like you, you think that _I_ am a bought man.” He annunciates each word slowly, as if speaking to a child. Or the mentally infirm. She flounders, the rotund little shit behind her gone all meek and small in the face of Eddie’s shed civilities. She opens her maw to answer, but before she can regain her wits, they cut her off, gesturing rudely with their beverage, just widely enough to threaten a spill that has her dodging ungracefully backwards. “Oh no, you’re done wasting my time. Have a good night.” And he’s got his back to them now, the onlookers barely keeping up their pretense of focusing on their own conversation or drinks, all staring some-what openly at their back as they walk away.

As soon as they clear the bubble of Madam Satan’s faltering influence, they begin scanning the room for Stark. Obviously, Eddie’s presence here has opened the door to an awful pandora’s box of gossip and attempts to use their apparent association to tear both men down. But Stark, blindingly intelligent as he is and with the full gamut of his life basically from birth being surrounded by these smucks, has to have know how this was likely to go down.

Knowing this, Tony Stark had cajoled them into coming. Presumably, because the man wants them to be present with him. And they, in turn, had allowed his to be swept off into the mire of this social cesspool as soon as the doors dinged open; to face all this unpleasant garbage _alone_. “Some friends we are,” and a quiet reverberation of agreement.

Stark, when they find him, is wearing a plastic smile that looks to be causing him physical pain, and the petite blond harassing him into a corner is not prepared for them at all.

“Hello Eddie” Stark calls needlessly, waving him over once he’s in earshot; it’s obvious from across the room that they’re bee-lining their way straight to him.

“Hey, Tony,” they smile crookedly, shoving their hands in their pockets and stopping right next to where he’s leaning artfully against one of the many bars. Tony returns the smile and Eddie feels his turn into something a lot more genuine, and then the little wisp speaks up and brings his sour mood back full force.

“Eddie” coos the girl, giving him a once over that’s even dirtier than the politicians’ underhanded comments. “Mr. Brock,” he corrects her, leaning back against the counter at Tony’s side, hands still in his pockets and posture as standoffish as he knows how to make it without venom’s bulk encasing them. “I don’t know you.” He adds, smiling hugely in a way that he knows makes him look like even more of an asshole.

She huffs indignantly, but like the politicos she doesn’t know how to handle his shit without chipping her own perfect varnish. Clearly, whatever she was talking to Tony about before has her torn; she obviously does not want to have the discussion in front of Eddie. Eddie, for his part, picks up on her hints that he should leave and flat out ignores them. Tony, who they both know full well understands what’s going on here, just keeps smiling, rambling a canned introduction and then letting the air fall into a thick, uncomfortable silence.

She gives up, and as the night progresses, he stays put by Tony’s side. People still come by to talk to Tony, of course. He’s far too influential for an unknown quantity like Eddie to keep them fully at bay, but it is clear that they do not speak as candidly as they otherwise might, his presence making them uncomfortable. He wonders how much of that is his reputation as a reporter, and how much is the animal instinct screaming at them that this man is thinking bloody, violent thoughts about their potential as dinner. Probably both.

Every person that approaches has the same obvious question burning in their eyes: what is Eddie Brock doing here? What is he doing here with Tony Stark? But no one asks. He kind of wishes they would, because then he wouldn’t have to.

“Why did you want me here?” They ask eventually, hours into the evening and between awkward visits from other guests.

“Because of this.” Tony says simply, gesturing to the space between them.

“A conversation deterrent?” and he could get behind that, having Eddie here to threaten away the sharks. It still makes some small part of them burn with disappointment.

“No, though that _is_ a nice side effect.” He smiles again, one of the small handful of real ones Eddie’s been coaxing out in their small moments left alone. “This still isn’t where I would choose to be spending my time, but your being here makes it more bearable. And I’ve spent less time fantasizing about ripping their throats out than normal.” He comments, watching a fat politico walk up and then think better of it, turning back away in a move too practiced to look natural.

They huff a laugh that makes a few close passersby look over in concern. “That’s only because I’ve taken over by day-dreaming about eating them for **dinner**.”

“Possibly” he mumbles through the smile into his scotch.

Eddie sighs, leaning back as another small group visibly gathers up the courage to come bother them. “Alright then.”

As the evening draws on it becomes clear that the guests do not want Eddie next to stark. It is equally clear that it is exactly where Stark wants him to be. So, they stay.

After the party:

The actual execution of the evening leave them with a lot of mental downtime, retreating into their own minds when the socialites step forward to monopolize Stark’s time, and they are strangely glad for the small reprieve. Because despite the outward cool they are (for once) certain is solidly in place, their inner landscape is a riot.

Tony Stark as an interested scientist makes sense. The man himself is fascinating but him to be fascinated in Eddie and Venom past the scientific is just… unacceptable. They can’t accept it, can not fathom why he would bother or even look twice. Because they are, at heart, two hopeless losers.

And yet, despite themselves there are moments, actions, that refuse to slot themselves into the worldview they have constructed. Things like late night pizza trips, long conversations between Stark and venom when Eddie’s busy catching a quick accidental nap in the lab. His overbearing protectiveness which has been present and painfully obvious since the outset, and as much as they want to tell themselves that he would do the same for any one of his team, the fact is that when he started shielding them, he hadn’t even met them yet.

Now that he had, Stark had only gotten more involved. Gotten them more involved, dragging them into battles with the avengers, throwing them in SHIELD’s face along with an iron curtain of impenetrable protection and all but daring them to do something about it.

Most absurdly of all, Stark spent his time with them. Not just what was required for research, they’d long since figured out that the downtime between tests, waiting for results, had been doctored. Why Stark felt he had to use subterfuge was beyond them, clearly the only thing he ever had to do was ask and they would acquiesce. Every time. Because being around Tony was worth it, even here.

Tony Stark, they finally have to admit, simply wants to be around them. Likes them, even. Has accepted them at every turn with absolutely zero expectation that they should change.

Eddie’s never had that before. Venom sure as fuck hasn’t either. The realization is overwhelming, a tight heat in their chest akin to panic, but somehow pleasant.

Tony Stark likes them. Huh.

***

The trip back to the car is blessedly quiet, and they welcome the opportunity to breathe cleaner air, mentally wash themselves of the burden of too much smell, light, noise, sensation and just. Be. Stark is leaning against the railing next to them, relaxed like a weight has suddenly sloughed from his shoulders, like he’s mentally washing off the contamination as much as they are. There’s a glittering in the corner of his eye when he catches them watching, but they don’t look away and he doesn’t seem to mind, a tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you.”

“Eh.” They shrug, trying to look nonchalant and shift their gaze to the metal doors in a vain attempt to hide the hint of blush creeping along their cheeks.

“No, seriously, I invited you into the lion’s den, and it was purely a selfish move on my part. No one in their right mind likes being in that kind of atmosphere and I drug you in right alongside me. I’m the asshole stuck in quicksand who reaches out to grab his best friend and drag him in with him.” They can’t help but smile at the man, bewildered _, flabbergasted_ , because he’s talking like they did him a _favor_ of all things. At this point, they’d gladly go galivanting into hell beside Stark, no invitation required, but they keep that to themselves.

“Bunch of duplicitous, shallow, narrow-world-view-having magpies. All of them. What does it take to get people to look past their own self-interest?”

They shrug, thinking about it themselves. “Your kind are like that.” It’s not the right thing to say. Stark shutters off and whips around to face them faster than they can blink, in their face in a way no one else would dare to attempt, practically snarling.

“Excuse me?” Their jaw feels like it is hanging at approximately the level of their shoes, Venom having raised their hands in surrender the moment Stark’s ire flared up to sucker punch them in the nose. “Humans, Stark. Your kind like, as in humans. Not… you’re not like that. You know you’re not and you know we didn’t mean it that way.” The deflation is immediate and almost comical and has them grinning unapologetically despite themselves. Stark just huffs, hackles smoothing back down as he retakes his position and mulls it over.

“Yea, well.” Tony’s head weaves back and forth like he’s weighing potential arguments, and it appears he finally deems them lacking. He concedes the point with a subtle bow in their direction and their chest expands pleasantly at the acknowledgement. Agreement. Acceptance. So many subtle things Stark gives them all the time, unthinkingly, easy as breathing. They wonder is he even realizes the gift he has inadvertently given them. The night’s been enough of an internal shell shock that they actually find it in themselves too _ask_.

“What do you mean?” Stark’s puzzlement, as genuine as everything else about him once you know were to look, has the quiet contentment inside them bubbling on a low boil. The grin reflecting in his glasses is sharp as razors, pleased as a lion with a fresh kill, and Tony’s eyes crinkle at the edges in response. Definitely not the response their teeth would get from anyone else.

“You are the only one who wouldn’t challenge that.” He wields a raised eyebrow expertly, louder than a verbal demand to expand, make sense of the nonsense they’ve suddenly started spouting, and they try. There’s a chance, they are starting to think, that Stark just might be able to understand, if only a little. “The ‘Your Kind’ comment. Anyone else would argue about how human we are or skip right to mad panic like the deep end is right around the corner. Like the moment they take their eyes off us, we’ll dive straight in and start a bloodbath or something.” Halfway though the comment more honest than they have given another soul since their unity, their being slowly divides. On one side, the bone deep comfort Tony inspires in them, putting them entirely at ease, content, safe. One the other, spider-like fissures of tension go running up their spine, uncertainty vying for attention, warning them to stop before they cross some invisible line, share more than Tony is willing to take, drive him away. Just like Anne.

One half of his mouth twists up in the blatant response to irony that is so uniquely _Tony Stark_ , as though the mere suggestion that he be capable of reacting to anything the same way as a lesser-minded mortal is so outlandishly offensive that he doesn’t even know where to start debunking it; or if it is even worth the effort to try given that you were ignorant enough to make the assumption of him in the first place. For a moment they brace themselves with the expectation that they are about to receive the same treatment as his paparazzi, their heart squirming in a way it usually doesn’t unless they are intentionally changing its location. Then the far corner tugs further up, showing off the bright gleam of Stark’s startlingly white teeth, and the shadows creeping into his eyes vanish like a ghostly wisp of cloud dissipating in the face of a burning sun. Their tension evaporates with it.

They turn their astonished face to him like a flower basking in a warm glow, the throaty tenor of his chuckle reverberating in the small space, through their chest, and feeling sound (new and frightening as it has often been for Eddie to experience) is ridiculously pleasant in this context. It feels like Tony’s laughter is their own, and they can’t help but grin back in shared amusement. The firm touch of a hand on their shoulder adds to their elation. This man knows more about them than anyone else on their current planet and he is absolutely _brilliant_ ; they are certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that he knows nearly everything that they have done since Venom landed and even though they possess a habit of _frequent cannibalism_ and strength sufficient to rip through the Iron Armor… Tony Stark is not afraid of them.

‘Good’ is too mild a word for how that realization makes them feel and they flounder, carding through the litany of verbs in Eddie’s repertoire for something that comes close, that even begins to scratch the surface, and come up empty, until Venom pushes a sensation into their mind.

Their species has no language, not as human beings understand it. No words to tie the world to, to limit the bounds of their expression. Instead they blend a series of feelings, sensations, and perceptions into something altogether indescribable that none the less fills you with their desired meaning. It is as if you are standing in a music hall listening to a powerful orchestra, and the corporeal reaction within you could be transferred to the person next to you. Perfect nonverbal understanding.

Eddie wonders briefly what circumstances had bestowed Venom with such a wonderous sense memory as the one currently stealing his breath; then the hand slides away, Tony’s fingers trailing lightly down their upper arm in a lazy arc as he lets them fall to rest back by his side.

Eddie can feel the way they practically preen at the extra moment of contact and though he feels a not inconsiderable amount of embarrassment, he can’t muster the effort to stop them doing it. Inadequate as it is by way of description, simply _being near_ Tony feels _good_ , everything else he decides to give them is icing on top of an already delicious cake.

“Being human is overrated,” he finally answers. The brilliance of his grin has yet to diminish as he leads them through sweeping glass doors, into the crisp air of an early Autumn evening slowly becoming night.

***

As much of a pain in the ass as the evening had been, Eddie isn’t quite ready for it to end. Things had never been anything but easy around Tony from the start; he’d walked right into their space and carved out room for himself, slotting into their lives as though he belonged there. Tonight was something new, marked an invisible shift in the tectonics of their footing with one another. For Venom and Eddie it was a conquering of fear, rupturing barriers they hadn’t fully realized they’d erected in the wake of Anne’s violent departure from their lives. Feeling unafraid of being wholly honest with another person is freeing in a way they simply can’t articulate. For that person to be Tony Stark, well… that was just unfathomable.

For his part, Stark’s frequent stares had taken on a quality that went beyond his normal scrutiny, interest. A large part of his attention seemed to be turned inward, wondering not about their reaction to Stark but, perhaps, Starks own reactions towards them. They had absolutely no idea what to do with the information, other than to savor the low burn of a blush branding their skin, anticipation and trepidation for the moment Tony finally puzzles it out, perhaps gives the realization voice…

It seems Stark is as reluctant to end the evening as they are, chatting through the car ride, the dim parking garage, into the elevator and out the doors onto the floor Eddie knows damned well he’s the only resident of. Stark had never followed them to their door before. They fish out their key with sweaty palms as Tony watches on in amusement, the physical lock present only because of Eddie’s insistence (JARVIS controlled every other door in the building).

As much as they don’t want to end the unexpected wonder that this day has been, they know it won’t be the last. Stark’s fascination with them is veering towards more than purely scientific, Eddie’s certain, but that aspect alone would have kept him a frequent fixture in their lives regardless.

Surprisingly, as the door clicks open Tony leans in to brace himself on the frame, somehow managing to crowd them despite the spaciousness of the hall. A tendril of pure excitement races through their blood as he leans in close. Peering over the rim of his glasses, Tony licks chapped lips in a way that seems subconscious steals the bulk of their stunned attention. He casts a brief glance ceilingward, his mouth open as if to speak but unsure how to go about it.

Indecision is not something which seems to suit Stark, and the small departure from his overbearing confidence takes them off guard far more effectively than any possible overture could have.

“Look” he begins, staring intently into the middle distance over Eddie’s shoulder, “This isn’t, how I wanted this to go, to ask you over here so I can run tests like you’re a lab experiment, because you’re not, you have to know you’re not, and I don’t want you to think that’s what this is.” Stark’s face is slowly creeping towards a gentle crimson in the dyeing light, the tension in his frame betraying his discomfort, and they are stunned. Finally, the espresso dark eyes lock back onto theirs and they are hoping this isn’t what it sounds like, Stark guilting himself into stopping. Before they can get a word in past their open lips, he’s off again. “You’re fascinating. Not just the whole alien race I haven’t ever heard of and me wanting to pick your brain thing, either. Eddie Brock is interesting enough on his own, this simultaneous consciousness thing you have going on is just…”

In the span of the ragged breath that punctuates his pause, Eddie vaguely realizes that they aren’t _moving_. He can barely feel their heart beating, as though their entire self is holding its breath as they wait for Tony to continue, because this sounds like the beginning of more than just Stark enjoying having them around…

“Get dinner with me tomorrow?” He finally asks, and somehow this single moment feels like a tipping point, as though the choice they make now will mark the course of their future indelibly. Staring at the abyss in the center of Stark’s honey-dark eyes through the violent tinted glass, Eddie thinks he might finally understand predeterminism, because despite appearances to the contrary this does not feel like a choice at all.

Every part of them wants to say yes, to submit themselves to Stark’s request, whether it is to be poked and prodded or engage in witty banter, or something as mystifying as _dinner_ matters very little, so long as it buys them more time in his presence.

“Whatever you want” does not seem to be the answer Stark’s expecting, but they’d venture to guess it is a response part of him _wanted_ , if the way he bites his lip and his eyes darken to the color of rich wood is any indication. He sways incrementally closer before seeming to catch himself at it, stepping smoothly back into the hall on a deep breath and steadying himself with a tight grip on the door. His smile returns and renders his expression playful as he visibly gets himself under control, the veneer of ‘Tony Stark’ overlaying itself seamlessly on top of the nearly identical body double below it, but Eddie’s got a good feel for the differences.

“Be careful with blanket clearances,” he admonishes, a smarmy grin hinting that he hopes they won’t listen, simultaneously warning that he might take full advantage if Eddie isn’t careful. Both interpretations seemed equally true and equally amenable to them, as the door swings shut on the most pleasantly bewildering day of their joined life to date.

Autumn colors burn in all their vivid golds and reds as the sun sinks beyond their window. Despite the beauty of the natural display they hardly pay attention to the changing world beyond the glass. In the isolated confines of their home, Eddie parts their lips and gently tastes the air on their tongue, savoring the last vestiges of Tony’s presence lingering around them.

***

Eddie stares at his reflection and wonders when looking human began to feel like wearing a disguise.


End file.
